“I don’t know why, I’m sure, only I can tell you that you have told it to the right man. And now will you go a step further and confide in me how it was that you ever did marry the fellow? and we’ll drop the subject for ever and the day after. Don’t tell me if you don’t wish.”
“I have gone so far that I may as well go further. I never knew until now how fascinating a thing is confession. I suppose that if it were not for women there would be no such thing as a confessional in any church.”
“I should say not; but their secrets are sacred.”
“I could never doubt you, and that is why I tell you now that I allowed myself to be persuaded by my poor mother into marrying that man. She believed that it would be for my own good.”
“Of course. But why—why? Your father has heaps of money, I’m told, and the man’s position was a poor one.”
“It was my position in this neighbourhood that was a poor one. You see, I’m only the daughter of a farmer.”
“What better could you be? The Wadhursts have been at Athalsdean for hundreds of years, and in the neighbourhood for maybe a thousand. The name is Saxon. I looked up the whole dynasty in the county history.”
“Then you know all about that; but is there any county history that will tell you who are the sort of people at Framsby that have it in their power to decree who are to be visited and who are not?”
“A pack of idiots—old women—tabbies with their claws always out, and not prize tabbies at that. I’ve heard all about them. The family of the village sawbones—the village attorney—a colonial clerk whose ability was assessed at four or five hundred a year—I have been properly coached on the whole crew—all rotters. But it’s the same way in every beggarly town like Framsby. It’s in the hands of half-a-dozen tabbies, and their whole aim is to keep out the nicest people—the best-looking girls and the best educated.”
“They kept me out, at any rate. Perhaps they were right; if they began admitting farmers’ daughters into their sacred circle, where would its sacredness be? They kept me out as they had kept my poor mother out, and the very means that she had taken to have me recognized—the education that she insisted on my getting, the expensive frocks, the good furs— real sables, mind, not musquash sables at forty pounds or rabbit-skin sables at thirty shillings, but real sables—these only caused the door to be more tightly closed against me; and my dear mother took it all so much to heart that she never raised her head afterwards. That was why she made me accept the first offer I received from some one who would take me away from this neighbourhood.”