It was a delightful spring day and Miss Vipen decided that, instead of waiting calmly at home until her usual circle gathered about her at tea time, she would make a number of calls, ensuring a warm welcome at each house by the amazing and secret tidings she would be able to bring. Mrs. Sampson was still bound to silence, and only the fact that Miss Vipen was already acquainted with the morning's happenings had made the rector's wife reluctantly complete, and as it were, round off, the story.
Miss Vipen's first call was at Chancton Grange. Since General Kemp had behaved so strangely some two years before, turning on his heel and leaving her drawing-room before he had even said how do you do, she had scarcely ever crossed Mrs. Kemp's threshold. But to-day an unwonted feeling of kindness made her aware that the important piece of gossip she came to bring would make her welcome to at least one of the Grange's inmates, and to the one whom she liked best, for she had always been, so she assured herself to-day, rather fond of Lucy. Poor Lucy, wasting her youth in thinking of a man who would certainly never think of her, and yet with whom, so Miss Vipen understood, her parents very wrongly allowed her to correspond!
The old lady was naturally delighted to find the inmates of the Grange all at home, and all three sitting together in the room into which she was shown. Both the General and his wife made what they flattered themselves was a perfectly successful attempt to conceal their surprise at seeing Miss Vipen, but they were not long left in doubt as to why she had come, for she plunged at once into the matter, looking sharply from her host to her hostess, and from Mrs. Kemp to Lucy, as she exclaimed, "I suppose that you have not heard the great news? You have no idea of what took place this morning? Here, in Chancton Church?"
But General and Mrs. Kemp shook their heads, but their daughter began to look, or so Miss Vipen thought, rather guilty.
"Well, there was a wedding at our church this morning! But you will never guess,—I defy any of you to guess,—who was the bride and who the bridegroom!"
Then the speaker saw with satisfaction that General Kemp gave a sudden anxious glance at Lucy. "The lady has not lost much time," continued Miss Vipen, "for her husband has only been dead four or five months. Now can you guess who it is?"
But Lucy broke the awkward silence. "Just ten months, Miss Vipen—Mrs. Rebell became a widow early in June——"
"Well, no matter, but can you guess the name of the happy man? Of course one could give two guesses——"
But alas! Miss Vipen was denied her great wish to be the first to tell the delightful piece of news, for, while she was enjoying Mrs. Kemp's obvious discomfort, Lucy again spoke, and in a sharp voice very unlike her own,
"Why, Mr. Berwick—I mean Lord Bosworth, of course! Who else could it be?" Then she looked rather deprecatingly at her parents: "I could not say anything about it, because it was told me only yesterday, as a great, a very great, secret."