"Oh, no, Mr. Hale—not for a long time—not for a year, at the very least! Who could have told Mrs. Hale such a thing? I assure you it is quite, quite wrong! Do you know who told her? Was it my aunt?"
She looked at him with an earnest, imploring look that aroused Mr. Dalrymple to regard her with considerably sharpened interest. The alarming thought had struck her that her lover might have privately enlisted Mrs. Hardy's support for his new scheme; and if so, how should she be able to resist so formidable a pressure?
"I think it was Mrs. Thornley told Mrs. Hale. She had a letter from her sister, Mrs. Reade, yesterday; and Mrs. Reade had mentioned it. Ladies' gossip, Miss Fetherstonhaugh!—ladies never can keep secrets, you know. They tell everything to one another, and then to us. And we—we tell them nothing. We know better, eh, Digby?"
"Come along," said Digby, who was getting a little savage, "and don't talk like a fool."
At this critical juncture Mr. Thornley appeared to announce that there was bread and cheese in the dining-room for anybody who was hungry. Whereupon the men trooped out—all but Mr. Dalrymple, who apparently was not hungry. He was lounging at Rachel's side, with an elbow on the mantelpiece, pulling his moustache meditatively; and he did not move.
Rachel was fluttered and excited.
"How do people get hold of those things?" she exclaimed, with a vexed, embarrassed laugh. "It is very true that everybody knows one's business better than one does one's self. I hate that kind of impertinent gossip. No one has the least ground for supposing that I am going to be married shortly. I have no intention of being married for ever so long."
"Why do you care what people say?" said Mr. Dalrymple. "I never care. It is much the best plan."
"I would not, if I could help it; but I can't," she responded, turning round and mechanically spreading her pink palms to the fire.
"And, after all," he continued, slowly, "all the talking in the world can't make you marry if you don't want to."