"Why not?" She spoke abruptly and Owen frowned.
"Well, she's not the sort of girl I like my wife to be intimate with. I'm sorry for that poor fellow Herrick. He is a sensible man, and knows that if his wife's past is to be forgotten it will be by living quietly and decently, and not by pushing into the society of the neighbourhood whether she is welcome or no."
"Owen, you're perfectly hateful." Toni was really angry. "She is always welcome here, anyway. You know quite well that no one round about really likes me. Oh, they call and all that sort of thing; but no one is really friendly to me, and all the time they are saying horrid things about me behind my back."
"I think you are talking nonsense, dear," said Owen quietly. "No one says horrid things. To begin with, what should they say?"
"They say I'm common and ignorant, and so I am," said Toni passionately, with a sudden desire to blurt out the conversation she had overheard on that miserable day in August. "Mrs. Madgwick says so, and Lady Martin. I heard them—and lots of other people say so too. I thought it wasn't true at first—and then I saw it was. I asked Mr. Herrick, and he told me to read and educate myself and then I could be useful to you—and instead of that you went and got that perfectly hateful Miss Loder, and everyone knows it was because you were sick of me trying to help you and doing it so badly."
Owen's face as he listened to this speech was a study in bewilderment. The introduction of Herrick's name puzzled him considerably; and although he frowned at Toni's description of Miss Loder, he realized that by some means Toni had been made unhappy over her own position as his wife.
"See here, Toni, I don't quite understand." He looked at her keenly. "Who says you are ignorant—and all the rest? And what on earth has Herrick to do with our affairs?"
"I told him—he saw me crying and asked me why. It was at the Vicarage Bazaar—I was sitting in a summer-house and Lady Martin and Mrs. Madgwick were outside, and they began to talk about me and they said all those horrible things——"
"Toni, were you obliged to listen? Couldn't you have got away!"
"No." She lifted her clear eyes to his and he repented his question. "I couldn't come out when they had begun; and I didn't know at first that they were talking secrets."