“But you should, my dear; you should,” he said in a gently reproachful tone, as he came to the back of her chair and, gently stroking her dark hair with his plump white hand, printed an affectionate kiss on the smooth white forehead, from which the frown had scarcely yet departed.
As soon as her husband had left the room, Mrs. Brander gave herself up to resolute consideration of a difficult and delicate plan of action. After some time she came to a decision, and her face cleared.
“To-day is Wednesday,” she said to herself, glancing at an almanac on her writing-table. “This dinner, or luncheon, or whatever it is, is not till Friday. Then I have to-morrow to work in.”
And she rose with a sigh of relief, and went about her household duties with a lighter heart, feeling that she had provided for the fulfilment of a very disagreeable task in a rather able manner.
On the following afternoon Mrs. Brander, after a short drive in the neighborhood, drove her little ponies up to the door of Rishton Hall Farm to make her first call upon Mrs. Denison. The latter lady had already expressed some indignation that the vicar’s wife had not called upon her before, and had even announced her intention of being “not at home” to Mrs. Brander, to show her sense of the folly of such airs in a woman who ought, by virtue of her husband’s office, to be the humblest in the parish. However, what happened when the smart-looking little pony carriage drew up at the door was this: the farmer’s wife, after peeping through the dining-room curtains, in a flutter of excitement, rushed across the hall to the drawing-room, with a hoarse whisper of directions to the approaching housemaid, and greeted the visitor, on her entrance, with a mixture of dignity and effusiveness, which the vicar’s wife met with her usual, straightforward, matter-of-fact simplicity of manner. Mrs. Brander had brought her ten-year-old daughter with her, less for companionship than for the reason, which she would at once frankly have owned, that the child’s fragile fairness formed an admirable compliment to her own brunette beauty. The child also served to make the introduction of the two ladies less formal, as her presence resulted in Mrs. Denison sending for her own two spoilt children, whom Mrs. Brander greeted courteously, but without effusiveness. Indeed, she afterwards described them as the two most intolerable little offences against humanity she had ever met, and she was much too frank to do more than veil this feeling even in the presence of their mother, whose caresses of the little Kate and compliments on her beauty evidently excited in the more sensible of the two mothers no approval whatever.
The vicar’s wife had something in her mind that she considered of far more importance than any matter connected with mere children. Before very long she brought the conversation round to Olivia Denison, of whom she took care to speak with such exceedingly moderate approbation as she thought likely to suit a step-mother’s taste. Mrs. Denison was delighted to meet some one who did not go into the usual raptures about the young girl’s beauty and amiability.
“Olivia is not a bad sort of girl,” she admitted, in a patronizing tone. “But she has been terribly spoilt by her father. Her temper is almost unbearable, and I regret to say that she does not scruple to indulge it on my poor children.”
“I should think you would be glad to get her married and settled, both for her sake and your own, then,” said Mrs. Brander. “She is a showy sort of girl, who ought to marry even here.”
Mrs. Denison looked for a moment rather embarrassed.
“Well, certainly,” she admitted grudgingly. “A gentleman has already made his appearance who seems to be attracted by her—at least, so her father thinks. I myself shall not see him till to-morrow, when he comes to luncheon here.”