“No, no; we did not quarrel. I liked Tabitha very much. I was almost as fond of her as you yourself could be.”
“And yet you dismissed her!” Disney retorted bitterly. “She was not smart enough for you, perhaps. Those Crowther people may have put it into your head that she was old-fashioned—that you could never have a modish household with such a humdrum old person at the head of it. Was that your motive?”
“Oh, Martin, how can you think me so frivolous? I hate smartness and pretension as much as you do. No, I should never have dismissed Tabitha. She left me of her own accord.”
“Why?”
“She wanted rest. She was too old for service, she told me. I tried to keep her. I humiliated myself so far as to beg her to stay with me”—the tears came into her eyes at the mere memory of that humiliation—“but she had made up her mind. She would not give way.”
“Where did she go?”
“To Falmouth—to live with her sister, a shoemaker’s widow. They let lodgings, I believe.”
“She must have gone mad! A lodging-house must be harder work than anything she had to do here.”
“Yes, I think it must.”