At half-past three Susan, having come to the conclusion that sitting up here won’t help her out of her difficulty, wanders downstairs and into the schoolroom, where Betty makes much of her, and makes her sandwiches out of the still warm mutton, which, in spite of their nastiness and her headache, Susan devours with avidity. Hunger is a great sauce; no one has ever yet invented one to beat it. And perhaps, if all were known, Susan’s ache belongs more to the heart than the head. When the sandwiches are finished, she declares herself much better, and Jane coming to say that Lady Millbank is in the drawing-room, she rises, and expresses a desire to see her.
Lady Millbank, or ‘the Sack,’ as the irreverent young Barrys always call her, thinks it the correct thing to be in with, and civil to, her Rector—without giving herself any unnecessary trouble. The drive from Millbank to the parish church is five good miles, so she always makes a point of lunching with some of her friends and taking afternoon tea at the Rectory. Even so far she would not have condescended, but that the Rector, poor as he is, has sprung from a good old stock, and that his wife was a connection of the late Sir Geoffrey Millbank.
‘So sorry to hear you have been ill,’ says she, as Susan enters. Susan is a favourite of hers. ‘The heat, eh?’ She speaks exactly as she looks. She is one of those people who can be very gracious when they like, and perfectly abominable on other occasions. She is ugly and shapeless, and careless about her dress, but no one can mistake for a minute that she is well born.
‘It was very warm,’ says Susan.
‘You look pale, my dear. I think, Miss Barry, she ought not to go to church this evening.’
‘No, no, of course not, Susan,’ says Miss Barry severely; she is sitting behind a wonderfully battered old teapot that has certainly seen service, and must have been pure at heart to have come out of the trial thus victoriously, though maimed and wounded. It is the pride of Miss Barry’s life, and has come down to the Rector after many days.
‘I suppose you saw that George Crosby has come home?’ says Lady Millbank. ‘I had heard a rumour of his coming a week or so ago, but thought nothing of it. Such a man as he is can never be relied upon, and when he turned up actually alive last week, I was more surprised than I can tell you.’
Last week! She had seen him, had talked with him. Had he told her? Susan’s heart sinks within her. Positive despair makes her raise her eyes and look at Lady Millbank. Oh, if——
But Lady Millbank is still chatting on, and in her eyes, as they meet Susan’s, there is no arrière-pensée. No; he had not betrayed her.