“Hush!” said Mrs. Brander, rather alarmed by the strength of her effect. “We don’t like to think that; we mustn’t think that. But there is just enough unpleasantness about the affair. You understand,” she murmured confidentially.
“I should think so!” cried Mrs. Denison, heartily. “I’ll take care that he shall never——”
The vicar’s wife interrupted her, laying a persuasive, but not feeble, hand on the arm of the excited lady.
“You will take care never to hint a word of this to him, or to any one,” she said, in a low, but exceedingly authoritative, tone. “You remember your promise. Without any measure so strong as that, we women always know how to give an acquaintance who is in any way undesirable not too much cold shoulder, but just cold shoulder enough.”
She rose to go, feeling that she had done enough to accomplish her purpose.
“I think that ought to do it,” she said to herself, with subdued and still somewhat anxious satisfaction, as she whipped up her ponies, and drove away from the farm.
CHAPTER XIII.
The second Mrs. Denison was, unfortunately for her husband’s household, one of those ladies who unite in themselves most of woman’s typical frailties. One of the most marked of these was a great jealousy of any member of her own sex who was younger, better looking, or in any way considered more generally attractive than herself. This jealousy rose to such a pitch in the case of her handsome step-daughter that she was more pleased at the discovery of the ineligibility of Olivia’s new admirer than disappointed at the failure of a prospect of getting rid of her.
In spite of her promises to Mrs. Brander, Mrs. Denison of course told her husband that night, with some triumph, what a desperate character he proposed to introduce into the bosom of his household on the following day. But her sensational tirade produced little effect. Mr. Denison had indeed heard the old story since he gave the vicar of Saint Cuthbert’s his invitation; and, to tell the truth, it had rather tended to increase than diminish the liking he had taken to the parson. An injudicious liking for the girls was a humanising foible which he could understand and excuse. As for the disappearance, it was an old story, and might contain an old slander. At any rate, even a murderer was better than a milksop. So he made light of his wife’s deep-voiced harangue, and pronounced his opinion that Mrs. Meredith Brander might find something better to do than to spread these foolish stories concerning her brother-in-law.
“Then you mean to take no steps, in the face of what I have told you, to prevent your own hearth from being polluted by the presence of a murderous libertine?” inquired Mrs. Denison, who had the liking of a narrow and half-educated mind, in moments of excitement, for language equal to the occasion.