“No, the weapon they showed me was an Italian stiletto.”
The grocer's daughter shuddered, her mother murmured, “And for that girl.”
“We didn't know him. The Brookes never allow their friends to know any one in Southwick, but I have heard that he is an exceedingly nice—”
“He will be Lord Mount Rorke, if his uncle doesn't marry again.”
“He must have been desperately in love; no one ever heard of such a thing before. It sounds like the Middle Ages—a stiletto!”
“But what could he see in her? That's what I can't make out; can you?”
“Ah! there I can't assist you. I hope to be able to cure him of the stiletto wound, but Cupid's arrows are beyond me. They did not fly so thickly or strike so hard in my time.” And, laughing, the doctor withdrew.
“I suppose that after this she will marry him; she never intended to let him slip through her fingers. I can see her face when she heard that another quarter of an inch and her chance of being Lady Mount Rorke was gone for ever.”
“I daresay he won't marry her now. It would serve her right. I should be so glad.”
And so pouring their gall out upon the unfortunate Maggie, the tradespeople returned to their homes. The stiletto was so utterly unprecedented, and so complete a reversal of all conception of the chances of life at Southwick, that every one felt puzzled and dissatisfied, even when gossip had brought to light every circumstantial detail of the romantic story. Had the deed been done with a knife, with anything but a stiletto; had he hanged himself, or cut his throat with a razor, or shot himself with his revolver, the wonder of the Southwickians would not have been so excited. But a stiletto! And for a week an Italy of brigands and bravoes, and stealthy surprises haunted shadows of picturesque archways, an Italy of chromo-lithographed skies and draperies in the Southdown Road. Maggie was spoken of with alternate fear and hate; her wickedness seemed more than natural, and had the Southdown Road known anything of Italian opera, there is little doubt that Miss Brookes would have been compared to Lucretia Borgia. The young women looked out of their windows at night, and wondered how they'd feel if a troubadour were suddenly to sing to them from behind the privet hedges. The young men were even more impressed than their womenfolk; they cursed their place of birth and habitation, knowing that it incapacitated them from knowing her; they wasted their mothers' candles sitting up till two in the morning writing odes to cruel women with raven hair; and all gazed sadly on the old ship in the harbour, and the Spanish main seemed nearer, and those gallant days more realisable than they had ever been before.