Having completed her arrangements at last, she came to call upon the vicar's wife.
Mrs.Goddard had not changed since she had first visited Billingsfield, five months earlier, though little Eleanor had grown taller and was if possible prettier than ever.

Something of the character of the lady in black may have been gathered from the style of her letter to Mr.Ambrose; that communication had impressed the vicar's wife unfavourably and had drawn from her husband a somewhat compassionate remark about the bad English it contained.

Nevertheless when Mrs.Goddard came to live in Billingsfield the Ambroses soon discovered that she was a very well-educated woman, that she appeared to have read much and to have read intelligently, and that she was on the whole decidedly interesting.

It was long, however, before Mrs.Ambrose entirely conquered a certain antipathy she felt for her, and which she explained after her own fashion.

Mrs.Goddard was not a dissenter and she was not a Romanist; on the contrary she appeared to be a very good churchwoman.