The housekeeper broke into ejaculations of alarm as she touched the girl’s wet garments.
“Bless me! you’re soaked to the skin!” she cried, beginning instantly to divest Olivia of her outer garments with a vigorous hand. “Come upstairs with me. Yes, you must; it would be manslaughter on my part to let you stay five minutes in those clothes. I believe you’ve caught a fever already.”
Fatigue, excitement, cold, and wet had done their work on Olivia, who began to look and to feel ill. She resisted for a few moments the housekeeper’s well-meant endeavors to drag her to the door, but yielded at last, and suffered herself to be taken upstairs, and arrayed from head to foot in garments belonging to her hostess which, if neither well fitting nor fashionable, were at least dry. Mrs. Warmington, for that, she informed Olivia, was her name, assured the girl that she would have plenty of time to have her outer garments dried, and to get away home before Mr. Brander returned, as it was his day for visiting an outlying part of his straggling parish.
“And,” she said, “he will no doubt go straight on from the Hall Farm after luncheon, and won’t be back here until teatime.”
“Without having had anything to eat,” thought poor Olivia.
She let herself be led downstairs again, noting, as she did so, that no visible corner of the house, except such parts of it as came within the housekeeper’s special province, was one whit more comfortable or homelike than the bare hall. A pang of acute pity for the lonely man pierced her heart as she decided that, whatever sin he might earlier in life have been guilty of, no expiation could be more complete than his dreary life in this desolate house, with only an old woman for companion. And Mrs. Warmington did not strike her as the most devoted servant or the most sympathetic personality in the world. She had “seen better days,” evidently; but although she did not flaunt the fact unduly, it perhaps gave her a little additional aggressiveness of manner, so that, in spite of her kindness, Olivia felt that one must be hard up for companionship to seek Mrs. Warmington’s society. The girl was indeed struck by the difference between the warm kindliness the old woman showed to herself and the rather off-hand manner in which she alluded to her employer. She began to puzzle her head as to the reason of this, and grew very anxious to find out in what esteem the clergyman was held by his solitary dependent. After a little conversation by the fireside, during which the warmth came gradually back to her shivering limbs, she put out a feeler in this direction.
“It’s a very lonely life that you and Mr. Brander lead up here,” she said, looking into the fire, and hoping that she did not betray in which of the two lives she took the greater interest.
“You may well say lonely. It’s a godsend to see a human creature about. I could have blessed the rain to-day for bringing you here.”
“I suppose it’s even worse for you than for Mr. Brander, because he has his parish duties?”
“Well, I’m of a more contented turn of mind than he,” said Mrs. Warmington, with the same coolness that she had previously shown on the subject of her master. “But, then, to be sure, perhaps I’ve a better conscience.”