Before this torrent of questions Lady Eynesford tactfully retreated a little way. A warning against hasty love dwindled to an appeal whether so much friendliness, such constant meetings, either with daughter or with father, were desirable.
"I'm sure I'm sorry for the poor child," she said; "but in this world——"
"Suppose it's all a slander!"
"My dear Alicia, do they say such things about a man in his position unless there's something in them?"
"It's nothing to me," said Alicia again.
"Of course, you can do nothing abrupt; but you'll gradually withdraw from their acquaintance, won't you?"
Alicia had escaped without a promise, pleading
for time to think in the same breath that she denied any concern in the matter. She was by way of thinking now, and all that Lady Eynesford had said repeated itself in her mind as she looked out on the garden and the glimpses of the town beyond. She understood now Dick's banishment, her sister-in-law's unresting hostility to the Medlands, and the reason why she had been pressed to go to Australia. She spared a minute to grief for Daisy, but her own sorrow would not be denied, and engrossed her again. In the solitude she had sought, she cried to herself, "Why didn't they tell me before? What's the use of telling me now?" Then she would fly back to the hope that the thing was not true, that her friends had clutched too hastily at anything which would save her from what they dreaded, and, she confessed to herself, rightly dreaded. No, she would not believe it yet; and, if it were not true, why should she not be happy? Why should she not, even though she did what Dick had not dared to do, and what, when Coxon asked her, she had laughed at for an absurdity?
There began to be more movement outside the gates. The first note of band-music was wafted to her ear, and the roll of wheels announced the return of the church-goers. She roused herself and went to meet them. They were agog with excitement, partly about the meeting, partly about the murder. While Eleanor was trying to tell her of the state
of popular feeling, the Governor seized her arm and began to detail the story of the discovery.