She tossed and turned and moaned aloud with a childish impatience. Her mind could find no rest; it could not throw off the deadly knowledge that Seymour Michael had come back into her life. And somehow she was no longer Anna Agar, but Anna Hethbridge. She was no longer the fond mother whose whole world was filled by thoughts of her son—a miserable, thoughtless, haphazard world it was—but again she was the wronged woman, moved by the one great passion that had stirred her sordid soul, a fearsome hatred for Seymour Michael.
She was not an analytical woman; she had never thought about her own thoughts; she was as superficial as human nature can well be. That is to say, she was little more than an animal with the gift of speech, added to one or two small items of knowledge which divide men from beasts. But she knew that this was not the end. She never doubted for a moment that it was merely a beginning, that Seymour Michael was coming back into her life.
Like a child she tossed and tumbled in her bed, muttering half-consciously, “Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?”
CHAPTER XXIII. AND THE TIME PASSES SOMEHOW
His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him.
For two days Mrs. Glynde had been going about the world with a bright red patch on either cheek; and it would seem that on the third day, namely, the Sunday, things came to a crisis in her disturbed mind. At morning service her fervour was something astonishing—the quaver in her voice was more noticeable in the hymns than ever, and the space devoted to silent prayer after the blessing was so abnormally long that Stark, the sexton, had to rattle the keys twice, with all due respect and for the sake of his Sunday dinner, before she rose from her knees; whereas once usually sufficed.
It was the devout practice that all the Rectory servants should go to evening service, while Mrs. Glynde, or Dora, or both, remained at home to take care of the house. On this particular evening Mrs. Glynde proposed that Dora should stay with her, and what her mother proposed Dora usually acceded to.
“Dear,” said the elder lady, with a nervous little jerk of the head which was habitual or physical, “I have heard about Arthur.”