“Vernon Brander will never be the worse for having you for an enemy. I should be sorry for him if you were his friend,” she said, defiantly.
“Oh, all right, I’m glad to hear it,” said Fred, glad at last to beat a retreat, and delivering his parting words at the gate of the poultry yard, with one foot in the new-laid egg basket. “Then if anything unpleasant happens to your father or your parson through me, you’ll be able to make light of it!”
Olivia felt rather frightened when she saw how discolored and distorted with rage his little weasel’s face had become. But she bore a brave front, and only said, for all reply to his threats—
“Won’t you find it more convenient to stand on the ground, Mr. Williams? To walk about among eggs without accident requires a great deal of skill and experience.”
But when, with an impatient exclamation, he left the poultry yard, Olivia’s heart gave way, and she began to reproach herself bitterly for not having kept a bridle upon her tongue. On the other hand, she was glad that her words had provoked the mean little fellow to confess his loans to her father; for she thought she had influence enough with the latter to prevent any more such transactions, and as for the money already owing, means must somehow be found to repay it.
It was late in the afternoon before she was able to start on the way to St. Cuthbert’s. She felt, as usual, some self-reproach at the thought that she was acting contrary to her father’s wishes; but, as usual, she was too self-willed to give up her own in deference to his. The sun was still glowing on the fields, and pouring its hot rays on the roads, which were parched and cracked for want of rain. The cart-tracks made faint lines in a thick layer of white dust, which the lightest breeze from the hills blew up in clouds, coating the leaves on the hedges and swirling into heaps by the well-worn foot path. The wood that bordered the road for some distance between Rishton and Matherham was as silent as if the birds had all left it; oak and beech and dusty pine looked dry and brown in the glare. It was a long, hot, weary walk; but at last she came near the lonely Vicarage, and slipping down the final few yards of the steep lane, in a cloud of dust which was raised by her own feet at each step, Olivia heard the faint sound of voices coming from the house, and stopped short, fancying she could detect Vernon’s voice, and wondering who was with him. But the sounds ceased, and she went slowly on, thinking she had perhaps been mistaken. She entered the garden gate, and walked up the stone pathway, still without hearing anything more, until, suddenly, just as she was within a few paces of the door, she heard a woman’s voice, low, but clear and strong, utter these words—
“Remember, you swore it. Ten years ago you swore it to me, and it is still as binding on you as it was then.”
“Why should I forget it?”
Olivia knew that it was Mrs. Brander’s voice that answered, in a tone full of contempt and dislike—
“Why, this Denison girl, this——”