"Oh, dear Miss Firs-Robinson!" cried the rector's wife, a little sallow woman. "You should remember, you should indeed. She is dead, you know."
"Yes, I do know," said the old lady in a loud voice, "but how does that alter matters? If the dead want to be praised, they ought to behave themselves properly whilst they are alive, and she didn't. I am sorry the poor woman died like that, without returning to consciousness even for a little while."
"It was quite hopeless from the very first," said Mrs. Poynter.
"Dr. Bland and Dr. Dillwyn were both quite agreed about that."
"Oh no!" Agatha spoke as if involuntarily. "Not quite agreed. Dr. Dillwyn told me she might recover."
"Told you?" questioned Mrs. Greatorex quite gently. Then with a little smile: "But when, dear Agatha?"
The girl looked at her and paused. She seemed to struggle with a certain confusion.
Mrs. Greatorex, who would have made a splendid diplomatist, at once regretted her question, and stepped into the breach. She had made up her mind that her niece was to settle herself in life well, and to have her even "mentioned" with so deplorable a detrimental as Dillwyn—a young doctor just making his first breach through the wall of life—would be destruction. She therefore came to Agatha's rescue, and accepted the question as answered.
"He seems to have had two minds on the subject," she said slightingly, "which only shows how ridiculous it would be to place any confidence in his opinion. Young men of his age are not to be relied upon."
"I wonder if the party at Ambert Towers will be put off?" said the rector's wife, lowering her voice and speaking confidentially. "It was to be on Thursday next." "I should think not. Lord Ambert is not the sort of man to—-"