"Well, then—since we are agreed in our diagnosis," the older woman went on, smiling, "what remedy do you suggest? Or rather, how can we administer it?"
"What remedy?" Justine hesitated.
"Oh, I believe we are agreed on that too. Mr. Amherst must be brought back—but how to bring him?" She paused, and then added, with a singular effect of appealing frankness: "I ask you, because I believe you to be the only one of Bessy's friends who is in the least in her husband's confidence."
Justine's embarrassment increased. Would it not be disloyal both to Bessy and Amherst to acknowledge to a third person a fact of which Bessy herself was unaware? Yet to betray embarrassment under Mrs. Ansell's eyes was to risk giving it a dangerous significance.
"Bessy has spoken to me once or twice—but I know very little of Mr. Amherst's point of view; except," Justine added, after another moment's weighing of alternatives, "that I believe he suffers most from being cut off from his work at Westmore."
"Yes—so I think; but that is a difficulty that time and expediency must adjust. All we can do—their friends, I mean—is to get them together again before the breach is too wide."
Justine pondered. She was perhaps more ignorant of the situation than Mrs. Ansell imagined, for since her talk with Bessy the latter had not again alluded to Amherst's absence, and Justine could merely conjecture that he had carried out his plan of taking the management of the mill he had spoken of. What she most wished to know was whether he had listened to her entreaty, and taken the position temporarily, without binding himself by the acceptance of a salary; or whether, wounded by the outrage of Bessy's flight, he had freed himself from financial dependence by engaging himself definitely as manager.
"I really know very little of the present situation," Justine said, looking at Mrs. Ansell. "Bessy merely told me that Mr. Amherst had taken up his old work in a cotton mill in the south."
As her eyes met Mrs. Ansell's it flashed across her that the latter did not believe what she said, and the perception made her instantly shrink back into herself. But there was nothing in Mrs. Ansell's tone to confirm the doubt which her look betrayed.
"Ah—I hoped you knew more," she said simply; "for, like you, I have only heard from Bessy that her husband went away suddenly to help a friend who is reorganizing some mills in Georgia. Of course, under the circumstances, such a temporary break is natural enough—perhaps inevitable—only he must not stay away too long."