“I can hardly believe it’s true! I’m surprised!” twittered Miss Caroline. “Although, of course, Miss Lovell is certainly rather unconventional, I’ve always looked upon her as quite nice. But to spend a night—like that—at a hotel—” Words failed her, and she had to rely upon an unusual pinkness of her complexion to convey adequately to Mrs. Carberry the scandalised depth of her feelings.
“Perhaps I’m not so surprised as you are,” returned the M.F.H.‘s wife. “I never cared for the girl. After all, she was merely a companion-help.”
“Companion-chauffeuse,” corrected Miss Caroline diffidently.
“Companion-help,” repeated Mrs. Carberry, unmoved. “And no one would have taken her up at all if Lady Susan hadn’t made such a silly fuss of her. It’s absurd, when her brother’s nothing more than Mr. Coventry’s estate agent. I always think it’s a great mistake to take people like that out of their position. One generally regrets it afterwards.”
“Still, I believe the Lovells were quite a good family—West Country people—lost money, you know.” Miss Caroline’s conscience drove her into making this admission. Also, she wanted very much to know how Mrs. Carberry would meet it. Mrs. Carberry took it in her stride.
“That’s just it. They’ve lost money—mixed with the wrong sort of people. Losing money so often involves losing caste, too. If this story proves to be true, I shall be very glad indeed that I never allowed my daughter Muriel to make friends of these Lovells. We shall soon know,” she added, a note of hungry anticipation in her voice. “The part about the engagement is true, without doubt, since it came direct from the Oldstone Cottage cook. Besides, one could see that this Lovell girl was angling to catch Mr. Coventry. If the engagement is broken off, we may feel pretty sure, I think, that the rest of the story’s true, too.”
Privately, she hoped it would prove true, since a man is very often caught at the rebound, and, judiciously managed, it seemed quite possible that Coventry, shocked and disgusted at Ann Lovell’s flightiness of character, might turn with relief and admiration to so modest and well-brought-up a girl as her own daughter. To see dear Muriel installed as mistress of Heronsmere had been her ambition from the first moment of its new owner’s coming to live at Silverquay, and when Miss Caroline had volunteered the news of Ann’s supposed engagement to him, it had come as a rude shock to her plans. But this had been so swiftly followed by the story of Ann’s scandalous behaviour in Switzerland that she had speedily reacted from the shock, and was already briskly weaving fresh schemes to bring about the desirable consummation of a marriage between her daughter and Eliot Coventry. Decidedly, Mrs. Carberry was not likely to help stem the tide of gossip setting against Ann!
The day following, the news that Eliot had left England for an indefinite stay abroad flew like wildfire through the neighbourhood, and, in consequence, substance was immediately given to the stories already circulating. There could be no longer any further doubt as to what had happened—Coventry had asked Miss Lovell to marry him, and then, discovering how she had forfeited her reputation somewhere on the Continent, had broken off the engagement between them the very next day.
Silverquay fairly buzzed with the tale. Everybody jumped to the same conclusion and told each other so with varying degrees of censure and disapprobation. Miss Caroline, eager as a ferret, even paid a special visit to Oldstone Cottage, to obtain confirmation of the dreadful truth. Having previously assured herself that Robin and Ann were both out, she darted into the Cottage on the plea of delivering the monthly parish magazine and, naturally, lingered on the doorstep to chat a little with Maria.
“Surely there’s no truth in this story I hear, Maria?” she opened fire after a few minutes devoted to generalities.