"You mistake me," said Mrs. Poynter, flushing delicately, yet with a glance round her. She wanted to laugh, but it is so impossible to laugh alone. She caught Dicky Browne's eye at this moment, however, and was happy.
"I'm sure I do, my dear," said old Miss Firs-Robinson heartily, who was really a good soul. "Poor man! I'm talking of Dr. Darkham, Dicky; he's gone all to pieces, they tell me, over this business."
"I hope sincerely nobody will put him together again," returned Mr. Browne piously.
"Such a feeling man!" said Mrs. Greatorex, dropping into a chair near them. "No wonder he is in such a terrible state. I fear this sad occurrence will place the neighbourhood in grief for some time."
"I suppose so. And yet"—Mrs. Poynter turned to her next neighbour—"You see, she was such a stranger to us, poor woman! Such a stranger!" She lifted her pale-gray gloves here, and did something to her veil. "Did you" said she gently, looking at Mrs. Greatorex, "see much or her?"
Mrs. Poynter's voice was wonderful. It was a perfect coo, like a dove's. And she was very good-natured, too, in her own way, but it had to be her own way. She detested anything unpleasant, anything that interfered with her, anything that rubbed her up the wrong way, and she certainly detested Dr. Darkham. But she had a little way with her that precluded the idea of her detesting anybody.
"Oh yes, very, very often," said Mrs. Greatorex sweetly. "I always tried to do what I could for her, poor creature!"
"And you?" said Mrs. Poynter, turning to Miss Firs-Robinson, who was looking grim. The old lady had been studying Mrs. Greatorex.
"Did you see much of her?"
"Well, as little as I could help," said the spinster with all the candour that adorned her, and a trifle of anger besides. "Because a more odious, a more unpleasant person I never met in my life."