Her lively mind caused her to take a great interest--too great an interest--in the private affairs of people some of whom she disliked, and even despised.

She was also not as scrupulous as she might have been in repeating unsavoury gossip.

Yet, even so, so substantially good a woman was she, that what some people called Miss Pendarth's interfering ways had more than once brought about a reconciliation between husband and wife, or between an old-fashioned mother and a rebellious daughter.

It was hopeless to try to keep from her the news of any local quarrel, love-affair, or money trouble--somehow or other she always found out everything she was likely to want to know--and she almost always wanted to know everything.
There was another fact about Miss Pendarth, and one which much contributed to her importance even with the people who disliked and feared her: she was the only inhabitant of the remote Surrey village who was in touch with the world of fashion and society--who knew people whose "pictures are in the papers." Now and again, though more and more rarely as time went on, she would leave Rose Cottage to take part in some big family gathering of the important and prosperous clan to which, in spite of her own lack of means, she yet belonged, and with whom she kept in touch.

But she herself never entertained a visitor at Rose Cottage, for a reason of which she herself was painfully aware and which the more careless of those about her did not in the least realise.