At the end of six months Mrs. Hesketh returned home, and by that time the great local scandal had been succeeded by others, and was more or less forgotten. Mr. Blagdon was said to be in America; Captain Lumley was in India; no one knew the whereabouts of the lady. She was living quietly in a country town thirty miles south of London, occasionally spending a few days at Oldcourt, but, on the whole, alone. To occupy her time she had taken up music, and worked hard; practising with a view to becoming a professional singer. As Mrs. Glyn, a solitary, pretty young woman, she made no acquaintances, with the exception of two or three elderly women in the same hotel, who regarded her as an interesting mystery; she could not be a widow, since she wore no scrap of mourning—presumably she had a husband,—but where? She kept herself conspicuously aloof from other people,—and why?
All the time, this much-discussed, unhappy stranger, was filled with a simple human craving to see her child again—to hold her in her arms. To have her with her, had become a sort of obsession. At night as she lay awake and weeping, she seemed to hear her forsaken baby, forlorn and helpless, crying to her across the darkness. She had sacrificed all for Cara—and lost her!
CHAPTER XXIII
‘MAYTHORNE,’ where Mrs. Glyn—formerly Blagdon—had hidden her diminished head, was a fine old red-brick mansion standing in its own grounds and meadows, and within thirty miles of London. Once the family seat of a well-known banker, it was now the successful investment of a syndicate, and a more or less glorified hotel, boasting (in a not untruthful advertisement) of its splendid situation, salubrious air, far-famed gardens, comforts, and cows.
When Letty, fearing that her company was beginning to irk her friend, and reluctant to return to Thornby, had implored Mrs. Hesketh to find her a quiet haven, Mrs. Hesketh’s friends, had recommended her to Maythorne. In late spring and early summer, the Maythorne guests were dull and commonplace: various invalids, lame, blind, and halt, with their nurses; girls or boys brought for change after the usual measles or whooping cough; old maids and widows; who knitted and gossiped and paced the broad walks in couples, took tea in little coteries, and devoted their evenings to cribbage, and patience.
To these, the arrival of a strikingly beautiful girl, a married woman, alone, without even a maid, offered a nice fresh topic for discussion. ‘Mrs. Glyn’ looked about nineteen, had a private sitting-room, and was very reserved—but when addressed, discovered a sweet, low voice, and timid manners. She had no visitors, and there was rarely a letter for her in the hall rack. Mrs. Glyn sang delightfully, and went twice to church on Sundays; and this was all that could be found out.
By degrees, the stranger came to know various other women, especially two of them—the oldest residents, who made a point of speaking to everyone,—these were friendly, and invited her to tea, and taught her ‘demon’ patience, and borrowed her Spectator; but Sister Sophy and Sister Mary, were painfully inquisitive, and she was not sufficiently subtle to evade their polite and insidious enquiries,—or to avoid disaster in the cunning pitfalls they so skilfully laid with regard to her ‘home.’ Letty instinctively felt, that her answers were unsatisfactory, and withdrew from their society as imperceptibly as she dared, contenting herself with the company of the hotel dog, who attended her in her country walks, and took tea with her most afternoons.
Maythorne was an irregular old house, renovated; with white paint, modern furniture, and pretty chintz; its ceilings were low, its stairs shallow, and in the long passages were unexpected steps. Letty’s apartments were detached, she had selected them on purpose, that she might play and sing without disturbing her neighbours.