“But, Martha, you ought to know it’s very silly and wicked to believe in such things,” Ellen Whitelaw said, feeling it her duty to lecture the girl a little, and yet half inclined to believe her.  “The moanings and groanings, as you call them, were only sounds made by the wind, I daresay.”

“O dear no, mum,” Martha answered, shaking her head in a decided manner; “the wind never made such noises as I heard.  But I don’t want to make you nervous, mum; only I’d sooner lose a month’s wages than stay for an hour alone in the west wing.”

It was strange, certainly; a matter of no importance, perhaps, this idle belief of a servant’s, these sounds which harmed no one; and yet all these circumstances worried and perplexed Ellen Whitelaw.  Having so little else to think of, she brooded upon them incessantly, and was gradually getting into a low nervous way.  If she complained, which she did very rarely, there was no one to sympathise with her.  Mrs. Tadman had so many ailments of her own, such complicated maladies, such deeply-rooted disorders, that she could be scarcely expected to give much attention to the trivial sufferings of another person.

“Ah, my dear,” she would exclaim with a groan, if Ellen ventured to complain of a racking headache, “when you’ve lived as long as I have, and gone through what I’ve gone through, and have got such a liver as I’ve got, you’ll know what bad health means.  But at your age, and with your constitution, it’s nothing more than fancy.”

And then Mrs. Tadman would branch off into a graphic description of her own maladies, to which Ellen was fain to listen patiently, wondering vaguely as she listened whether the lapse of years would render her as wearisome a person as Mrs. Tadman.

She had no sympathy from anyone.  Her father came to Wyncomb Farm once a week or so, and sat drinking and smoking with Mr. Whitelaw; but Ellen never saw him alone.  He seemed carefully to avoid the chance of being alone with her, guiltily conscious of his part in the contriving of her marriage, and fearing to hear some complaint about her lot.  He pretended to take it for granted that her fate was entirely happy, congratulated her frequently upon her prosperity, and reminded her continually that it was a fine thing to be the sole mistress of the house she lived in, instead of a mere servant—­as he himself was, and as she had been at the Grange—­labouring for the profit of other people.

Up to this time Mr. Carley had had some reason to be disappointed with the result of his daughter’s marriage, so far as his own prosperity was affected thereby.  Not a sixpence beyond that one advance of the two hundred pounds had the bailiff been able to extort from his son-in-law.  It was the price that Mr. Whitelaw had paid for his wife, and he meant to pay no more.  He told William Carley as much one day when the question of money matters was pushed rather too far—­told him in the plainest language.