Sanchia shook her head sadly. Her brows were arched to her hair. “No,” she said, “I don't care one pin.”
Lady Maria was no fool. She saw exactly what was going to happen, and no reason why she should not declare it. She had formed already a high enough opinion of Sanchia—which is to say no more than that she liked her—to be sure that it would not influence her conduct. “I'll tell you what the end of this will be,” she said. “You'll have him on the floor, kissing your toes. He'll be mad to have you—and you'll marry him. Then he'll be your slave for life. And they tell me that's the happiest state a woman can live in. I have some reason for believing it. I and the judge got along admirably, though the poor man might have bored me to extinction. Oh, you'll do very well. But don't make him jealous.”
Sanchia considered this. “I don't think he would be jealous,” she decided; “but we are rather premature, aren't we?” And then she related, as if they were an anecdote, the circumstances of her departure from Wanless.
Lady Maria listened carefully, nodding a dispassionate head at details which would have raised Philippa's hair, and depilated Mrs. Percival. “I think he's a human being, if you'll allow me to say so,” was the conclusion she came to. “It was no affair of the gardener's that I can see; and to be battered in your own drive by your own servant, even you must allow to be provoking.”
“Oh,” Sanchia assured her, “I didn't at all mind his being vexed. But he accused me of—all sorts of things.”
“Of course he did, my dear,” cried Lady Maria. “He was in a towering rage. How was he to know that you hadn't egged on the gardener?”
“By what he knew of me already,” said Sanchia with spirit. Lady Maria twinkled; but her scrutiny was keen. “I don't think you have explained the gardener,” she told her. Sanchia blushed.
“He's a boy,” was her suggestion: but Lady Maria's comment on that was, “And a bruiser it seems.”
Sanchia smiled gently. “Poor Struan! He was very difficult. He made me furiously angry. What he did was outrageous. But I am sure he is a genius.”
“What!” cried her ladyship. “A genius at gardening? or at thrashing gentlemen?”