“But what meant you touching Clare, Mistress Basset?”
“What meant I? Why, to have her with some worthy and well-conditioned dame of good degree, that should see her well bestowed. I would trust my Lady Dowager of Kent, forsooth, or my Lady Scrope—she is a good woman and a pleasant—or maybe—”
“And my Lady Scrope is herself in the Court, I take it,” said Lady Enville, pursuing her own train of thought, independent of that of Philippa.
“Ay, and were therefore the less fitting,” said Philippa coolly. “Take no thought thereabout, Orige; I will do nought till I have seen the maidens.”
“But, Mistress Basset! you would ne’er count that mine husband’s word, that is not in very deed her father, should weigh against mine, that am her true and natural mother?” urged Lady Enville in an injured tone.
“Thou art her natural mother, Orige, ’tis sooth,” was the uncompromising answer: “but whether true or no, that will I not say. I rather think nay than yea. And if thine husband be better father unto the child than thou mother, he is the fitter to say what shall come of the maid. And I can alway reason with a man easilier than a woman. Women be geese, mostly!”
With which reasonably plain indication of her sentiments, the old lady rose and took her leave. She would have no escort to the parsonage. She would come back and be introduced to Sir Thomas when she had seen the girls. And away she trudged, leaving Lady Enville in the undesirable situation of one who feels that a stronger will than his own is moulding his fate, and running counter to his inclinations.
Open doors were kept at the parsonage, as was generally the case in Elizabethan days. It was therefore no surprise to Mrs Tremayne, who was occupied in the kitchen, with her one servant Alison acting under her orders, to hear a smart rap on the door which shut off the kitchen from the hall.
“Come within!” she called in answer, expecting some parishioner in want of advice or alms.
But in marched an upright, brisk old lady, with silver hair, and a stout staff in her hand.