An elderly housekeeper was minded to greet Betsy with bitter words. Her young master had been dear to her, and she had not scrupled earlier to denounce in scathing terms the woman who had encompassed his death.
But the sight of the wan, white face, the sorrow-laden eyes, the graceful, shrinking figure of the girl-widow, restrained an imminent outburst, and the inevitable reaction carried the housekeeper to the other extreme.
“How d’ye do, ma’am,” she said brokenly. “’Tis a weary homecomin’ ye’ve had. Mebbe ye’ll be likin’ a cup o’ tea.”
Betsy murmured that she had no wants, but Yorkshire regards food as a panacea for most evils, and the housekeeper bade one of the maids “put a kettle on.”
So the ice was broken, and Mr. Stockwell breathed freely again, for he had feared difficulty in this quarter.
On Monday Pickering was buried, and the whole countryside attended the funeral, which was made impressive by the drumming and marching of the dead man’s company of Territorials. On Tuesday morning a special sitting of the county magistrates was held in the local police court. Betsy attended with her solicitor, the Coroner’s warrant was enforced, she was charged by the police with the murder of George Pickering, and remanded for a week in custody.
The whole affair was carried out so unostentatiously that Betsy was in jail before the public knew that she had appeared at the police court. In one short week the unhappy dairymaid had experienced sharp transitions. She had become a wife, a widow. She was raised from the condition of a wage-earner to the status of an independent lady, and taken from a mansion to a prison. Bereft of her husband by her own act and separated from friends and relatives by the inexorable decree of the law, she was faced by the uncertain issue of a trial by an impartial judge and a strange jury. Surely, the Furies were exhausting their spite on one frail creature.
On Sunday evening Mrs. Saumarez drove in her car through the rain to tea at the White House. She was alone. Her manner was more reserved than usual, though she shook hands with Mrs. Bolland with a quiet friendliness that more than atoned for the perceptible change in her demeanor. Her wonted air of affable condescension had gone. Her face held a new seriousness which the other woman was quick to perceive.
“I have come to have a little chat with you,” she said. “I am going away soon.”