Mrs.Prency had occasion to leave the room for an instant soon after, and Jane lifted her head and said,-- "Who would have thought, Miss, that that young man was going to be so good, and all of a sudden, too ?" "He always was good," said Eleanor, "that is, until now." "I'm sorry I mentioned it, ma'am, but I s'pose he won't be as wild as he and some of the young men about this town have been." "What do you mean by wild?
Do you mean to say that he ever was wild in any way ?" "Oh, perhaps not," said the unfortunate sewing-girl, wishing herself anywhere else as she tried to find some method of escaping from the unfortunate remark.
"What do you mean, then?
Tell me: can't you speak ?" "Oh, only you know, ma'am, some of the nicest young men in town come down to the hotel nights to chat, and they take a glass of wine once in a while, and smoke, and have a good time, and--" Eleanor looked at Jane very sharply, but the sewing-girl's face was averted, so that questioning looks could elicit no answers.

Eleanor's gaze, however, continued to be fixed.

She was obliged to admit to herself, as she had said to her mother several days before, that Jane had a not unsightly face and quite a fine figure.

She had heard that there were sometimes "great larks," as the young men called them, at the village hotel, and she wondered how much the underlings of the establishment could know about them, and what stories they could tell.
Jane suddenly became to her more interesting than she had yet been.

She wondered what further questions to ask, and could not think of any that she could put into words.