Castalia trembled from head to foot as she looked on the two rosy simpering faces. A curious ripple or tremor ran over her body, such as may be observed in persons recovering consciousness after a swoon. She tore the drawing into small fragments. Her teeth were set. Her eyes glared. She looked like a murderess. She trod the scattered bits into the carpet with her heel. Then, as if with an afterthought, she swept them contemptuously into the bright steel shovel, and threw them into the fire, and stood and watched them blaze and smoulder. After that she wrapped her shawl more tightly round her—she had forgotten to remove either it or her bonnet on coming in—and went out at the front door, and walked straight into Whitford, and to Jonathan Maxfield's house.
She asked for "the master." The old man was at home, in the little parlour, and Sally showed Mrs. Errington into the room almost without the ceremony of tapping with her knuckles at the door, and then made off to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Grimshaw. The lady's face had scared her.
Old Max was sitting near the dull fire which burned in the grate. The big Bible, his constant companion now, lay open on the table. But he had not been devoting his attention to that solely. He had had a large old-fashioned wooden desk brought down from his own room, and had been fingering the papers in it, reading some, and merely glancing at the outside folds of others. He now looked up at Castalia without recognising her.
"What is your business with me?" he asked, peering at her in perplexity.
"I've come to speak to you——" began Castalia; and at the first sound of her voice, Maxfield recognised her. He remembered the only visit she had paid him previously, when she came to beg that Rhoda might be allowed to visit her. She had taken a great fancy to his pretty Rhoda, this skinny, yellow-faced, fine lady. Ha! Well, she might show what civilities she pleased to Rhoda. No objection to that. Indeed, it was a proceeding to be encouraged, seeing that it probably caused a good deal of discomfort and embarrassment to Algernon! So he gave a little nod, meant to be courteous, and said, "Oh, I didn't just know you at first. Won't you be seated?"
Castalia refused by a gesture, and stood still opposite to him with one hand on the table, apparently in some embarrassment how to begin. Then it flashed on old Max that this "Honourable Missis," as he called her, had probably come to thank him, and found it not altogether easy to do so. But what could Castalia have to thank him for? This; Rhoda had so implored her father to relieve Algernon from his anxiety about the bills, that at length the old man had said with a chuckle, "Tell you what, Rhoda, I'll hand 'em over to Mr. Diamond, and maybe he will give them to you as a wedding present if he gets the school. And then you can do what you like with 'em. My gentleman won't be above taking a present from you or your husband. I've seen what meanness she can do and what dirt he can swallow, and not even make a wry face over it! Aye, dirt as would turn many a poor labouring man's stomach."
Rhoda, upon this, had consulted Matthew Diamond, and had not found it difficult to make him agree with her wish to give up the bills to Algernon. Indeed, although he had almost come to old Max's opinion of his former pupil, he would not for the world have behaved so as to make Rhoda suppose that he bore him a grudge. Rhoda's errand to the post-office that afternoon had been to bring Algernon this comforting news. She had taken care not to tell her father of Mrs. Algernon's behaviour, but had come home and cried a little quietly in her own room, and kept her tears and the cause of them to herself. Therefore it was that Jonathan Maxfield supposed the fine lady to have come to thank him for his magnanimity on behalf of her absent husband, and he was already preparing to give her "a dose," as he phrased it, and to spare her no item of Rhoda's prosperity, and wealth, and good prospects in the world.
Castalia remained leaning with one hand on the table, and did not continue her speech during the second or two in which these thoughts and intentions were passing through old Maxfield's brain. But it was by no means that she hesitated from embarrassment or lack of words: rather the words crowded to her lips too quickly and fiercely for utterance.
"I've come to speak to you about your daughter," she said at length.
"Aye, aye. Miss Maxfield's a bit of a friend o' yours. Miss Maxfield's allus been very kind to all the fam'ly ever since we've known 'em. But you'd best be seated."