"At Chancton Priory?" repeated Miss Berwick, "why there's absolutely no one at Chancton Priory! Who can you possibly mean?"
All sorts of angry, suspicious thoughts and fears swept through her mind. As is so often the case with women who keep themselves studiously aloof from any of the more unpleasant facts of real life, she was sometimes apt to suspect others of ideas which to them would have been unthinkable. She knew that her friend's maid was a niece of Madame Sampiero's housekeeper. Was it possible that there had been any gossip carried to and fro as to Berwick's attraction for some rustic beauty? Well, whatever was true of him, that would never be true. To him temptation did not lie that way.
But it was the Duchess's turn to look astonished. "Do you mean," she exclaimed, "that you have not seen and know nothing of Barbara Sampiero's cousin,—of this Mrs. Rebell, who has been at Chancton for the last six weeks, and whom, if I judge rightly from the very pathetic letter which poor dear Barbara Sampiero dictated for me to that old Scotch doctor of hers, she is thinking of making her heiress?"
"Mrs. Rebell?"—Miss Berwick's tone was full of incredulous relief—"My dear Albinia, what an extraordinary idea! Certainly, I have seen her. My uncle made me call the very moment she arrived, and I never met a more apathetic, miserable-looking woman, or one more gauche and ill at ease."
"She did not look gauche or ill at ease at the Whiteways meet."
"Mrs. Rebell was not at the meet," said Arabella positively. "If she had been, I should, of course, have seen her. Do you mean the woman who was riding Saucebox?—that was some friend of the Boringdons."
It was the Duchess's turn to shrug her shoulders: "But I spoke to her!" she cried. "I can't think where your eyes could have been. She's a strikingly attractive-looking woman, with—or so I thought, when I called on her some ten days after she arrived at Chancton—a particularly gentle and self-possessed manner."
"Oh! but you," said Miss Berwick, not very pleasantly, "always see strangers en beau. As to James, all I can say is that I only wish he did admire Mrs. Rebell—that, at any rate, would be quite safe, for she is very much married, and to a relation of Madame Sampiero."
"You would wish James to admire this Mrs. Rebell? Well, not so I! To my mind his doing so would be a most shocking thing, a gross abuse of hospitality"—and as she saw that Miss Berwick was still smiling slightly, for the suggestion that her brother was attracted to the quiet, oppressed-looking woman with whom she had spent so uncomfortable a ten minutes some weeks before, seemed really ludicrous—the Duchess got up with a sudden movement of anger. "Well, you will be able to see them together to-night, and I think you will change your opinion about Mrs. Rebell, and also agree with me that James should be off with the old love before he is on with the new!"
"Albinia"—Miss Berwick's voice altered, there came into it something shamed and tremulous in quality—"Sir John Umfraville has left us. When it came to the point—well, I found I couldn't do it."