"Oh yes, I am very well. You don't know that I have been married since you saw me last. My name is Mrs. Beadon now."
She drew off her glove as she spoke, and let her long hand fall upon her lap, so that the old ladies might see her wedding-ring and keeper.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Bundlecombe, in a mollified voice, "if you are married to a good man, I am very glad, indeed. And I hope he is well to-do, and makes you happy. You are nicely dressed, Milly, but nice clothes are not everything, are they?"
"No, indeed, they are not. Oh, yes, Mr. Beadon is good to me in every way, so you need not trouble yourself on my account."
After that preliminary sparring, they became friendly enough. Milly was quite at her ease when her position as a wife was established, and she amused her hearers by a lively account of her recent fortunes and adventures—some of them, perhaps, slightly fictitious in character, others exaggerated and glorified. Her husband, she told them, was a great traveler, and was sometimes out of England for six months or a year at a time. He had just gone abroad again, and she had taken the opportunity of coming to see her grandmother—and even of living with her for awhile, if she found Birchmead supportable. They were not rich, but Mr. Beadon allowed her quite enough to live comfortably upon.
So she played the grand lady in the hamlet, to her own infinite satisfaction. But now and again she had business to transact in London, and then she would send to Thorley for a cab, and take the afternoon train to Liverpool Street, and return in about twenty-four hours, generally with some little present in her bag for her grandmother, or grandmother's friends.
None the less did poor Milly find that time hung heavy on her hands. She had not yet clipped the wings of her ambition, and she still pined for a wider sphere in which to satisfy her vague and restless longings. However she might brave it out to others, she was very far from being happy; and now and then she took herself to task, and admitted that all she had, and all she hoped for, would be but a small price to give if she could purchase once more the freedom of her girlhood.