“Is it not delightful to get into the country? I suppose you are staying in the neighbourhood for the yeomanry ball?”
Madeline made no reply. Possibly her illness had affected her hearing.
“This old church is considered quite the local sight. Our uncle is the rector. If you have come to look for any particular grave, we know the whole churchyard, and can help you to find it with pleasure.”
This was one of the remarks that Miss Laura Dancer subsequently wished she had not made.
Miss West murmured her thanks, and shook her head. And the girls, seeing that she evidently wished to be by herself—and, after begging her with one breath to “come and have tea at the rectory”—pranced down to the lych gate on their high-heeled shoes, followed more leisurely by the rector.
And at last Madeline was alone. But how could she kneel on the turf and press her lips to the cold marble and drop her bitter tears over her lost darling with other eyes upon her? How could she tell that the windows in yonder rectory did not overlook every corner and every grave? She laid the lilies on the turf, and stood at the foot of the new little mound for half an hour, kissed the name upon the cross, gathered a few blades of grass, and then went away.
The Miss Dancers, who had a fair share of their mother Eve’s curiosity, had been vainly laying their heads together to discover what had brought Miss West to Monk’s Norton church; and over the tea-table they had been telling their aunt and uncle what a very important personage Miss West was in the eyes of society—how wealthy, how run after, how beautiful, and what a catch she would be for some young man if she could be caught! But she was so difficult to please. She was so cold; she froze her admirers if they ever got further than asking for dances.
“All heiresses are said to be handsome, no matter what their looks. She is no beauty, poor thing! She looks as if she is dying. How can any one admire lantern jaws, sunken eyes, and a pale face? Give me round rosy cheeks.” And the rector glanced significantly at his two nieces, who were not slow to accept the compliment.
“Oh, aunty, she is shockingly changed since I saw her last,” said Laura. “She really was pretty; every one said so—even other women. She had an immense reputation as a beauty; and when she came into a ballroom nobody else was looked at.”
“Well, my lasses,” said the rector, rising and brushing the crumbs of cake from his knees, “the world’s idea of beauty must have altered very much since I was a young man; or else your friend has altered greatly. Believe me, she would not be looked at now.”