Laura's meditations made her unusually silent. Mr. Ashford talked on somewhat pompously, and pressed Meg to eat with rather patronising warmth, for "it was not every day that Mrs. Thorpe got such a meal"; and Meg herself did her best to rise to the occasion and converse pleasantly with her host.
The silver, and the cut glass, and the flowers pleased her eye; for pretty things were to Margaret, as they had been to her father, very sweet. She had spoken the truth when she had said she could not have borne to live in luxury now; yet for a breathing space she enjoyed it.
In nine cases out of ten it is the people with the keenest senses who take to asceticism. He who has never been intoxicated by the scent of flowers has never known the necessity of retiring into a wilderness.
Dinner was half over when Laura saw Meg's colour change. "It is only the man from the bonnet shop. It cannot be any one for you, Meg," she said quickly. Indeed, she fancied that she had good reason to know that it could not possibly be Barnabas Thorpe. Was he not in Newgate?
"It is not Barnabas. It is—Tom!" cried Margaret.
She rose hastily from her chair; and Laura, following the direction of her eyes, saw Tom's queer deformed figure through the open door. He had been standing in the hall; but when Margaret's exclamation reached him, he walked into the dining-room, thinking she had meant to call him.
To Laura this extraordinary person seemed a threatening embodiment from that outside world which claimed her sister. To Mr. Ashford he was a most impertinent intruder; but Meg made a quick step towards him. "Oh, Tom, is anything wrong at the farm?" she asked. And then turning to Laura: "This is my brother-in-law."
"I should ask your pardon for disturbing you, ma'am," said Tom, looking at Laura; "but I ha' need of a word with Barnabas' wife."
The accent, and still more the decided way in which he stated what he wanted, reminded Laura of the preacher.
He spoke quite civilly, but the peremptoriness jarred on her. Tom Thorpe was possessed by a sort of defiant repulsion, and glowered indignantly on Margaret and her fine relatives. So she was here in this grand room feasting and amusing herself? but she was "Barnabas' wife" all the same, and he was in prison!