Mrs. Stirling was at home, but would be engaged for the next quarter of an hour.
That did not matter in the very least. Mrs. Brutt was in no hurry. She would be most happy to wait. She stepped out, and trailed impressively after the maid. It was well for her peace of mind that she could not see and hear through brick walls.
"Mrs. Brutt!" The tone was significant. "Did you not tell her that I was engaged?"
"You said, ma'am, for a quarter of an hour. Mrs. Brutt doesn't mind waiting."
"If I'd known who it was, I would have been engaged altogether." This was an aside. No love had ever been lost between the two widow-ladies. Then to the maid—"You can bring tea in about twenty minutes." To herself again—"It shall be an elastic quarter of an hour!"
Which it certainly was. Mrs. Brutt, unconscious of her hostess' sensations, but much occupied with her own, stood poised in a graceful attitude at the exact centre of the room, conning over all that she meant to say. She had arrived with a definite purpose.
Unwittingly, the Squire had given her deep offence. It was almost inevitable that he should do so, sooner or later, since she ranked in her own eyes as a personage of high importance, while in his eyes she was nobody.
On her first return from abroad, he had called to thank her for the prompt response to his letter, shown in bringing Doris at once home; and he had also let her know that she was to keep to herself the story of Dick Maurice's suit. Mrs. Brutt had assured him that he might depend upon her discretion. She never talked! She never repeated things. "No one ever concerns themselves," she said, being often guilty of that most common of grammatical blunders, "less than I do, with other people's affairs!"
The Squire knew better, and smiled inwardly; but he believed that he had effectually shut her mouth. And it would have been so, had he followed the matter up, as he really at the moment had led her to expect, by personal attentions in the way of invitations to Lynnthorpe.
But he forgot to mention to Katherine that he wished such attentions to be paid; and Katherine disliked the talkative widow so thoroughly, that she was not likely to take steps on her own initiative. The Squire in fact forgot all about Mrs. Brutt from that day forward. He was harassed, worried, very far from well; and his mind was entirely taken up with his own secret conflict.