Skaife had forgotten her, he was thinking of another. Tremenhere stopped suddenly, and flushed deeply, as he fixed his earnest eyes on her—
"Have I, can I have been mistaken? Has my own wary judgment in general, deceived me this once? I thought," he almost uttered these last words to himself, "no one could cheat my watchfulness now."
"Mr. Tremenhere," exclaimed she in much embarrassment, yet anxious to cast from her a garment so hateful as the one which should cloak her as Burton's wife in his or any eyes, "I may be speaking boldly for a girl, and to you, a stranger too, but I would not have any one suppose, much less you, an injured man, that I can ever become your cousin's wife. Mr. Skaife, pray assure Mr. Tremenhere you did not allude to me!"
"Indeed," said Skaife, much puzzled by his own awkwardness, "I had forgotten all present; I will explain my meaning to you," and he turned to Miles.
"Oh!" answered this man again, reassured in confidence, and smiling his own peculiar smile on Minnie. "I ill deserve this kindness, this haste to soothe my wounds. Believe me, they are deep and cankering when I think of Burton, not for myself, but another. You have been so Christian in kindness to poor Mary, that I could not bear, Miss Dalzell, to associate any one I respected in even my thoughts with that traitor. Thought," he continued, musingly, "is a gift of the soul; you will inhabit mine, linked with that unfortunate girl, whom I much love."
"Am I to understand," asked Skaife aside to him in surprise, "that you know all?"
"All?" and the other stared, astonished at the question to himself. "Could any know it better? what else has again brought me to this place? what drove me from it?"
"Then, indeed, you are to be pitied, Mr. Tremenhere—deeply pitied; but I feared something of this, from your emotion in the humble cottage we have quitted."
Skaife was playing with shadows of his own creating. He fancied Tremenhere loved Mary, with whom he had been brought up from childhood; and he also thought he (Tremenhere) knew all her painful story. Skaife's last words demanded an explanation. Before the other could ask it, Minnie uttered an exclamation, and over the stile, the last one, near which they stood, struggled Mrs. Gillett—for struggle it was—whether she should overcome the stile, or the stile lay her in the ditch. However, she arrived safely on the side where stood the three, smoothed her dress, settled her apron, picked up a patten which she had dropped (she always carried these, even in the finest weather, to cross the brooks on,) and then she looked up over her spectacles, which were on the tip of her nose, and stood transfixed. At a glance she knew Miles Tremenhere. Mrs. Gillett had one excellent quality—she was no talebearer; she kept circumstances to herself; they only oozed out in imperceptible drops in her counsellings, making her seem an Œdipus for soothsaying and guessing. Her hearers were amazed when truths came to light which she had foretold, without any seeming foreknowledge of them: herein lay her strength and power over all. "Mussiful powers!" she mentally said; "here's a pretty business! What am I to do with him?" She was thinking of all the lovers for Minnie she had already on hand, with their leaders. Skaife was the first to recover self-possession. "Perhaps, Miss Dalzell," he said, "you will allow me"—he did not say "us," for Mrs. Gillett was, perhaps, ignorant who Tremenhere was; he might seem as a stranger to Minnie in her eyes—"to hand over my escort, however unwillingly done, to Mrs. Gillett; and I and my friend (he glanced at Miles) will continue our walk of business."
But Tremenhere stepped boldly forward; something more than his usual candour forbade disguise, even if practicable: "Mrs. Gillett," he said, "you and I are old friends. Surely you remember the 'sweet youth,' as you were used to call me when I visited Gatestone and your cosey room there!"