When I saw the shutters closed and the board up, you might have knocked me down with a feather.
Miss Nowell was so much liked in Lidford, and she had more than one invitation from friends to stay with them for the sake of a change after her uncle's death; but she would not visit anywhere.

She stayed quite alone in the cottage, with only the old servant." "But there must surely be some one in the place who knows where she has gone!" exclaimed Gilbert.
"I think not.

The landlord of Hazel Cottage does not know.

He is my landlord also, and I was asking him about Miss Nowell when I paid my rent the other day.

He said he supposed she had gone away to be married.