In this somewhat ignominious method of reaching her objective Miss Verity, although more and more mystified, amiably acquiesced—to be greeted, when Hordle throwing open the schoolroom door formally announced her, by a sound closely resembling a shriek.
Entrenched behind a couple of yawning trunks, a litter of feminine apparel and of personal effects—the accumulation of a long term of years, for she was an inveterate hoarder—encumbering every available surface, the carpet included, Theresa Bilson stood as at bay.
"My dear friend," Miss Verity exclaimed advancing with kindly outstretched hands—"what is the meaning of this?"—She looked at the miscellaneous turn-out of cupboards and chests of drawers, at the display of garments not usually submitted to the public gaze. "Are you preparing a rummage sale or are you—but no, surely not!—are you packing? I cannot describe how anxious I am to hear what has occurred. My sister, Mrs. Cowden, was extremely adverse to my facing the bad weather; but, I felt your note could only be answered in person. Let me hear everything."
She drew Theresa from behind the luggage entrenchments, and, putting aside an assortment of derelict hats and artificial flowers strewn in most admired confusion on the sofa, made her sit down upon the said piece of furniture beside her.
Whereupon, in the pensive, rain-washed, mid-day light, which served to heighten rather than mitigate the prevailing, very unattractive and rather stuffy disorder obtaining in the room, Theresa Bilson, not without chokings and lamentations, gave forth the story of her—to herself quite spectacular—deposition from the command of The Hard and its household. She had sufficiently recovered her normal attitude, by this time, to pose to herself, now as a heroine of one of Charlotte Bronte's novels, now as a milder and more refined sample of injured innocence culled from the pages of Charlotte Yonge. A narrow, purely personal view inevitably embodies an order of logic calculated to carry conviction; and Theresa, even in defeat, retained a degree of self-opinionated astuteness. She presented her case effectively. To be discharged, and that in disgrace, to be rendered homeless, cast upon the world at a moment's notice, for that which—with but trifling, almost unconscious, manipulation of fact—could be made to appear as nothing worse than a venial error of judgment, did really sound and seem most unduly drastic punishment.
Miss Verity's first instinct was to fling herself into the breech; and, directly her brother emerged from his room, demand for her protégée redress and reinstatement. Her second instinct was—she didn't, in truth, quite know what—for she grew sadly perplexed as she listened.
Her sympathy, in fact, split into three inconveniently distinct and separate streams. Of these Theresa's woes still claimed the widest and deepest, since with Theresa she was in immediate and intimate contact. Yet the other two began to show a quite respectable volume and current, as she pictured Damaris marooned on the Bar and Sir Charles ravished away from the seasonable obligation of partridge shooting to take his place at his daughter's bedside.
"But this young Captain Faircloth, of whom you speak," she presently said, her mind taking one of its many inconsequent skippits—"who so providentially came to the dearest child's assistance—could he, I wonder, be the same really very interesting-looking young man I met in the drive, just now, when I came here?"
And Miss Verity described him, while a pretty stain of colour illuminated her cheek once more.
"You think quite possibly yes?—How I wish I had known that at the time. I would certainly have stopped and expressed my gratitude to him. Such a mercy he was at hand!—Poor dearest Damaris! I hope his good offices have already been acknowledged. Do you know if my brother has seen and thanked him?"