“Well, it is done, and when I hear from John I mean to write to him; after all the girl is good and pretty, and he might have done worse.”
“Not well, I think,” answered Mrs. Temple, bitterly, and then she left the room, full of excitement and anger.
The news of John Temple’s marriage was indeed very bitter to her. Unconsciously she had learnt to like him too well for one thing, and for another she disliked, nay hated, the whole Churchill family. The boys had played in the fatal game when her little son was killed, and she had always felt a strange jealousy of May’s beauty. And now she was Mrs. John Temple, the wife of the heir of Woodlea! reflected Mrs. Temple, with curling lips.
But she was too much excited to keep the news to herself. She therefore hastily put on her hat and cloak, and started for the vicarage to tell her mother. She felt a sort of grim pleasure in thinking what a rage Mrs. Layton would be in when she heard it. And she certainly was not disappointed in this. Her arrival was most unexpected and inconvenient, for she rarely went to her father’s house, and on this unfortunate morning Mrs. Layton was engaged in what she called “dressing her feathers,” that is, all the feathers that she could collect from the fowls eaten at the Hall or at the vicarage were eagerly saved and stored away by Mrs. Layton until she had acquired a sufficient quantity to have a grand assortment of them. She was therefore sitting covered with feathers in her store-room, when she was told that her daughter, Mrs. Temple, was waiting below to see her.
She tried to shake herself free of the feathers, but with many still clinging to her hair and dress she finally descended, by no means in a good humor. Mrs. Temple was standing looking out of the window as she entered the room, and she gave rather a hard laugh when she saw her mother’s extraordinary appearance.
“Whatever have you been doing?” she said.
“I’ve been dressing my feathers, my dear,” replied Mrs. Layton, “my half-yearly dressing, you know, and I don’t believe, Rachel, that your cook or your scullery-maid have sent me half what they should.”
Mrs. Temple slightly shrugged her handsome shoulders.
“We’ve had a wedding in the family,” she said, scornfully, “and I’ve come to tell you the news.”