She considered this for some moments. Her head was bent towards her hands in her lap; she looked at her weaving fingers—a habit of hers. “That would be to the Rectory, I suppose?”
“Obviously,” said Mr. Germain. “You will remember that it was a yearly custom of mine.” She had every reason to remember it; but he must hear her say so. “You will not have forgotten that, Mary?”
“No! Oh, no! Of course I haven’t.” She looked at him for a moment—trouble in her eyes and flame in her cheeks.
“Last year,” he resumed, “I had Southover to show you—and there were reasons why I should not take you back so soon. This year there could be no such reason. I think that you might be pleased to see Misperton again; more particularly since you and Hertha de Speyne have struck up such a happy friendship. She is a noble young creature in every way; nothing could have pleased me more. Constantia will, of course, write to you; but, being my sister-in-law and happening to have other matters of which to speak, she mentioned it to me in the first event. I can assure you that there has been no want of respect——”
She flashed him another reproachful look—reproachful, not that he should think her offended, but that he should pretend to think her so. “Oh, of course not! How could you imagine such a thing? It is absurd—really absurd.”
He made no reply, was evidently waiting for her decision. She gave it reluctantly. “We will go, if you wish it,” she said.
He was immediately piqued. “That is hardly cordial, is it? I am not sure that I should, or could, wish it, on those terms.”
She had reasons of her own for disliking it extremely; but she kept her counsels in these days. “I will tell you exactly how I feel, if you will be patient with me,” she said. “I am sure that the Rector would be glad to have me there with you; and of course Hertha would like it. If there was nobody else I should love to go. I shall remember Misperton as long as I live. Wonderful things happened to me there; don’t think that I can forget them for an hour. But Mrs. James—Constantia, I mean—doesn’t like me at all. Why should we disguise it? She disapproves of me, doesn’t trust me, thinks me a nobody—which I am, of course——”
“I beg your pardon, my love—” he would have stopped her; but she saw what in particular had offended him, and ran on.
“I am your wife, I know. But I am a person, too; and I own that I would rather be with people who—who respect me for what I am in myself, as well as for what you have made me. Forgive me for saying so; it is rather natural, I think. And it happens that I should like to see my parents again, and my sisters. It is six months since I was at Blackheath. So that would be an opportunity, and a reason—while you were at the Rectory.”