Mrs.
Jernam, though a quiet person, and given to the minding of her own
affairs, was not quite without "cronies," and to one of these she
confided her anxiety about her niece. The _confidante_ was a certain
Mrs. Miller, a respectable person, but lower in the social scale than
Mrs. Jernam. She was a widow, and lived in a tiny cottage, close to the
beach at Allanbay; she kept no servant, but her trim little dwelling
was always the very pink and pattern of neatness. She was of a silent,
though not a morose temperament. It was generally understood that Mrs.
Miller's husband had been a seafaring man, and had been drowned many
years before she went to live at Allanbay. She had no relatives, and no
previous acquaintances in that quiet nook; and if she had been a little
higher in the social scale, belonging to that class which requires
introductions, she might have lived a life of unbroken solitude. As it
was, the neighbours made friends with her by degrees, and the poor
widow's life was not an unhappy or solitary one. Mrs. Jernam had early
learned the particulars of her case, and a friendship had grown up
between them, of which Mrs. Miller duly acknowledged the condescension
on Mrs. Jernam's part.
Mrs. Jernam called on her humble friend one day, to bestow some small
favour, and, to her surprise, found her, not alone as usual, but in the
act of taking leave of a man whose appearance was by no means
prepossessing, and who was apparently very much disconcerted by Mrs.
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