“Mr. Wynyard was so good to my poor husband, and, indeed, to me, I’ll never, never forget it. And, you see, Jimmy knew his father and mother, whom he could not remember, and one night in the dusk, just before I left, he told me his whole story. Of course I had always known he was the son of Captain Wynyard, and that he himself had been in the Red Hussars, but I did not know why he was earning his bread as your aunts’ chauffeur! He never said a word of you, but I understood—I realised the attraction that kept him, a young man of the world, in out-of-the-way Ottinge. He opened his heart to me that August night, and now, Aurea, you have broken it.”
“I?”
“Don’t pretend,” she cried passionately, and she looked at her almost threateningly; “don’t add to your sins. You know as well as I do how you treated him—certainly not as a lady should do; why, if I were to meet one of the Brodfield fly-drivers here I’d give him a civil greeting. You were outrageously rude—you overdid it. My only comfort is that, to be so jealous, you must have been extremely fond of him.”
Aurea coloured—she could blush furiously—and her complexion was very pink indeed, as seen through long strands of hair.
Then she sat down rather suddenly, and said—
“What’s done is done—and never can be undone!” and buried her face in her hands.
Whereupon the Honourable Mrs. Ramsay, having said her say, and “rubbed it in” remorselessly, quietly effected her departure.
CHAPTER XXXIII
SITUATION THE FOURTH
It was evident that some kind of armistice or pourparlers had been arranged between Mrs. Ramsay and her misguided young companion, for, when the General, the Rector, and Mrs. Morven returned to England, home, and duty, these ladies still remained abroad, and went together to a small and picturesque village in the very heart of the Alpes-Maritimes. Aurea longed for some such quiet retreat, where she could hide herself, and recover from a blow which had still left its quivering traces. Love and happiness were possibly within her reach, and she had, in all ignorance, cast them aside; her widowed chaperone understood and sympathised, and, though it was she who had inflicted the wound, she was absolved.
In the inn of a little mountain village the friends spent three weeks far from the giddy crowds, aloof from luxury, and the world. Here were thick cups, thin candles, good coffee, and sour bread. What long walks and talks they enjoyed, and how fully the girl opened her innocent heart to the experienced, world-worn matron! Letters were rare, and newspapers ignored; in Aurea’s mental condition, what were to her the fate of plays, of Cabinets, yea, of nations? She was never likely to hear tidings of him through the Press; but here Aurea was wrong. The unexpected—as is so frequently the case—declared itself. One afternoon the two ladies walked to a town at some distance, and as they waited for a well-deserved café complét, Mrs. Ramsay idly glanced over an old and fly-blown copy of the continental Daily Mail, and the following paragraph caught her eye and seemed to stab her in the face:—