‘Quite right, my dear,’ said Miss Hacket. ‘Connie would be very sorry to do anything against Lady Merrifield’s rules. We shall see you again in a day or two.’
And this is the way in which Constance kept her friend’s secret. When Miss Hacket had done her further work with a G.F.S. young woman who needed private instruction to prepare her for baptism, the two sisters sat down to a leisurely tea before starting for evensong; in the first place, Constance detailed all she had discovered as to the connection with Lord Rotherwood, in which subject, it must be confessed, good Miss Hacket took a lively interest, having never so closely encountered a live marquess, ‘and so affable,’ she contended; upon which Constance declared that they were all stuck-up, and were very unkind and hard to poor darling Dolores.
‘I don’t know. I cannot fancy dear Lady Merrifield being unkind to any one, especially a dear girl as good as an orphan,’ said Miss Hacket, who, if not the cleverest of women, was one of the best and most warm-hearted. ‘And, indeed, Connie, I don’t think dear Gillian and Mysie feel at all unkindly to their cousin.’
‘Ah! that’s just like you, Mary. You never see more than the outside, but then I am in dear Dolly’s confidence.’
‘What do you mean, Connie?’ said Miss Hacket, eagerly.
Constance had come home from school with the reputation of being much more accomplished than her elder sister, who had grown up while her father was a curate of very straitened means, and thus, though her junior, she was thought wonderfully superior in discernment and everything else.
‘Well,’ said Constance, ‘what do you think of Lady Merrifield sending her to bed for staying late here that morning?’
‘That was strict, certainly; but you know she sent Mysie too. It was all my own thoughtlessness for detaining them,’ said the good elder sister. ‘I was so grieved!’
‘Yes,’ said Constance, ‘it sounds all very well to say Mysie was treated in the same way, but in the afternoon Mysie was allowed to go and make messes with blackberry jam, while poor Dolly was kept shut up in the schoolroom!’
Constance did not like Lady Merrifield, who had unconsciously snubbed some of her affectations, and nipped in the bud a flirtation with Harry, besides calling off some of the curates to be helpful. But Miss Hacket admired her neighbour as much as her sister would permit, and made answer—