"But," concluded Mrs. Cushion, "I've no business gossiping here, and you wanting your tea."
So she left me to my tea and the reflection that she had neither contradicted nor confirmed Mrs. Robinson's statement.
During the next couple of days I was conscious of a certain constraint in our, hitherto, completely cordial relationship. Mrs. Cushion was just as careful as ever for my comfort—everything was just as well done, and meals as punctual, and rooms spick and span as before; but I missed something. I missed the interest she used to take in me and the interest she allowed me to take in her. She was still the perfect landlady, but I grievously missed the frank and genial human being.
I had lunched with the vicar and his guests on Tuesday. On Friday afternoon Mrs. Cushion got a lift into "Ziren" to do some shopping, and I had to take my own letters to the post office. I met the vicar on his way to call on me, and he turned back and walked with me, and I speedily perceived that something worried him. The vicar is stout and gouty, and walks but slowly. We only just caught the post, and then he asked me to go with him to the vicarage to look at a black dahlia in his garden before the first frosts took it.
In the garden he stopped long before we came to the dahlias and exclaimed, "I've heard from that vexatious woman."
"Mrs. Robinson?"
"Yes; just read her letter."
"DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX," it ran, "I feel it is my duty to tell you that I have been making inquiries about Caroline Cushion, and there is no question whatever that she is the same person who was living here when my husband and I first came to the parish. It happens that Mrs. Bayley, widow of the former incumbent, is at present staying with Lady Moreland at the Manor, and I called upon her the day I returned from Mr. Vernon's, that I might make searching inquiries as to where Caroline Cushion had lived before she left for Redmarley, where I understand she was left a cottage by her uncle, her mother's brother. Mrs. Bayley remembered her perfectly well, and, I must say, spoke highly of her. But she was as astonished as I was to hear she was posing as a married woman with a family, for she had lived in this parish from her youth up. I grieve much that I should have to bring this life of duplicity to light; and I feel it is only right to let you know, that you may take steps to sift the matter and bring the woman to a proper sense of her wrong-doing. For if during the years she lived here she really possessed a husband and children, she shamefully neglected them; and if she is unmarried the case is infinitely worse. Please let me know the result of your investigations.
"Yours sincerely,
"ELAINE M. ROBINSON."