“Not to-night, Miss Baker,” said she.

“Not going! and why not?”

“I’d rather not go out to-night.”

“Dear me, how odd. I thought you always went to Mrs Stumfold’s. There’s nothing wrong, I hope?”

Then Miss Mackenzie could not restrain herself, and told Miss Baker everything. And she told her story, not with whines and lamentations, as she had thought of it herself while lying awake during the past night, but with spirited indignation. “What right had she to come to me and accuse me?”

“I suppose she meant it for the best,” said Miss Baker.

“No, Miss Baker, she meant it for the worst. I am sorry to speak so of your friend, but I must speak as I find her. She intended to insult me. Why did she tell me of my age and my money? Have I made myself out to be young? or misbehaved myself with the means which Providence has given me? And as to the gentleman, have I ever conducted myself so as to merit reproach? I don’t know that I was ever ten minutes in his company that you were not there also.”

“It was the last accusation I should have brought against you,” whimpered Miss Baker.

“Then why has she treated me in this way? What right have I given her to be my advisor, because I go to her husband’s church? Mr Maguire is my friend, and it might have come to that, that he should be my husband. Is there any sin in that, that I should be rebuked?”

“It was for the other lady’s sake, perhaps.”

“Then let her go to the other lady, or to him. She has forgotten herself in coming to me, and she shall know that I think so.”

Miss Baker, when she left the Paragon, felt for Miss Mackenzie more of respect and more of esteem also than she had ever felt before. But Miss Mackenzie, when she was left alone, went upstairs, threw herself on her bed, and was again dissolved in tears.

Chapter XIII.
Mr Maguire’s Courtship

After the scene between Miss Mackenzie and Miss Baker more than a week passed by before Miss Mackenzie saw any of her Littlebath friends; or, as she called them with much sadness when speaking of them to herself, her Littlebath acquaintances. Friends, or friend, she had none. It was a slow, heavy week with her, and it is hardly too much to say that every hour in it was spent in thinking of the attack which Mrs Stumfold had made upon her. When the first Sunday came, she went to church, and saw there Miss Baker, and Mrs Stumfold, and Mr Stumfold and Mr Maguire. She saw, indeed, many Stumfoldians, but it seemed that their eyes looked at her harshly, and she was quite sure that the coachmaker’s wife treated her with marked incivility as they left the porch together. Miss Baker had frequently waited for her on Sunday mornings, and walked the length of two streets with her; but she encountered no Miss Baker near the church gate on this morning, and she was sure that Mrs Stumfold had prevailed against her. If it was to be thus with her, had she not better leave Littlebath as soon as possible? In the same solitude she lived the whole of the next week; with the same feelings did she go to church on the next Sunday; and then again was she maltreated by the upturned nose and half-averted eyes of the coachmaker’s wife.