“You understand that I am speaking in the utmost confidence? It must never go beyond the walls of this room”—we all three instinctively gazed with deep distrust at the walls—“I’m not thinking of myself, but of what it might do for the Rector if it got round that I had said anything about one of his people—you understand what I mean—in the Rector’s position—”
Of course I said at once that I quite understood what she meant, although one couldn’t help feeling that this was one of the moments when Lady Annabel was perhaps confusing the Rector with “H. E.,” the late Sir Hannabuss Tallboys. (We have all learned to think of him as “H. E.”)
Claire did not join in my protestations. I judged from her expression that she was, once more, living upon the edge of a volcano.
“Absolutely between ourselves, I should very strongly advise you not to let anyone suggest that the young woman whom I most mistakenly allowed to sing at the concert the other night—Mrs. Harter—should be asked to perform. I should think it most inadvisable.”
“May I ask why?”
Lady Annabel looked distressed.
“You do understand that I am speaking entirely unofficially?”
Not only did we understand, but, personally, I really did not see how she could speak in any other way.
“Then,” said Lady Annabel, “the fact is that I have, since the concert, heard one or two things about her. Naturally, I have links all over the Empire, as I may say, and this Mrs. Harter, as you know, has just come from the Near East. It seems that she and her husband are on most unhappy terms—no doubt there are faults on both sides; in fact, my correspondent said as much—but she has made herself quite notorious in a place where everyone in the European colony is of course watched and commented upon. And I noticed at the concert the other evening that there was a tendency to bring her into notice, simply, I suppose, because Cross Loman thinks it a fine thing for Ellison the plumber’s daughter to have married a man socially above her—Mr. Harter is a solicitor—and to have lived abroad. If they only knew what I know as to the sort of people one is obliged to receive out there!”
Lady Annabel Bending is not a spiteful woman. She would just as readily, I am sure, have come to the Manor House in order to sing the praises of Mrs. Harter as to disparage her. All that she ever wants is still to be as important as she believes herself to have been in her colonial service days.