Mrs. Kestridge tried to carry matters off quietly. She rose to take her departure with a great assumption of dignity.
“It sounds as rude as I suppose you intend it to be; you always had odious manners, Polly. No wonder you are so disliked! You are the real type of an old maid.”
Polly stood at the window and watched Winifred drive away.
“An old maid? Yes; I suppose that is my fate! Well, it does not alarm me. As long as I have my dear mother with me, I can snap my fingers at fate, and afterwards——” Polly paused, and she shivered faintly. “Oh! I won’t think of afterwards! Enough for me that mother is here, that we are together, and that we want nothing of any man or any woman, either.”
A satisfactory state of affairs that Mrs. Pennington completely upset that same night.
“Polly,” she said, in her slow, feeble way—“Polly, I wonder why Mr. Ambleton never comes to see us? He promised to come, and I want him. I have his goodness on my heart, and I want to tell him of my gratitude. Write and ask him to come, surely he won’t refuse to. I must see him. I have such a longing to see him to thank him for all he did in that terrible time. We are so lonely and sad here, and I want him—he will do me good.”
Polly stood and looked wistfully at her mother. She was a changed mother, she had grown so thin, and so old-looking.
There were tears very near to Polly’s eyes as she answered her mother.
“The death of old Lady Wentworth must have given him much to see after, darling,” she said; “but now, I dare say, he is free again. Anyhow, I will write to him.”
She did write as coldly as she could with courtesy, and there was a hard feeling against him in each word. It was so natural, that hard feeling. Had she not lavished the whole of her heart’s love on her mother? And yet—she did not suffice. She was jealous of this man, even while she found herself echoing that wish of her mother’s to see him. Yes; she was ready to confess that his presence would bring a sensation as of warmth into their chilled, isolated life.