“An old man like that . . . Really he ought to be ashamed of himself. He ought to be preparing himself for his eternal life instead of thinking of a wife. . . . And with all those children too.”
Mary’s sense of justice was offended.
“A great many widowers marry again for the sake of their children, don’t they?”
“But Mr. Hargreave has two grown-up daughters.”
Again there was a chilly catch at Mary’s heart, and she had a lump in her throat. She said:
“No one else has ever asked me to marry.”
It needed melodrama to move Mrs. Folyat; tragedy or tragi-comedy left her blank. She was in no mood for general consideration, for she was thinking with cold practicability of the need of the moment. When she thought of the house without Mary it was as a place of absolute silence. There were many evenings when Francis said never a word; many again when he sat alone in his study or working in his greenhouse, and only came up just before it was time to go to bed. Mrs. Folyat had a horror of silence. . . . Mary must not go, she thought, Mary must not go. She came swiftly to the point and asked:
“Have you accepted him?”
Unreasonably, in the face of experience, Mary had been expecting sympathy; she so craved it. For a flickering moment she desired almost viciously to lie, but she was hurt into truth.
“No,” she said.