“Captain Peignton!”
Grizel’s chin dropped; she stood stock-still, staring with big eyes. Why and wherefore she had no idea, but the news was subtly unwelcome and disturbing. She had imagined that the fiancé would be the curate, the doctor, the manager of the branch bank—never for one moment had it entered her mind to think of Dane Peignton filling the rôle. Her mind chronicled a picture of him as she had seen him last, bidding good night to Cassandra Raynor at the conclusion of the dinner party two nights before. She had studied him with critical eyes, acknowledging his attractiveness, and—like others before her—wondering wherein the attraction lay, but concerning one thing she had known no uncertainty, she had known that he had been bored to leave so early! There had been nothing of the eager lover about him, as he turned with Teresa to the door. Grizel felt the flatness of her own voice as she asked: “When? How long? I didn’t know...”
“Only on Tuesday. After the dinner party at the Court, I believe. He brought her home. Of course you were there, and saw them together. Didn’t you suspect?”
“Never.” Grizel shook her head. “I should not have suspected if I’d met them a hundred times. She is not all the kind of girl I should have expected—”
Mrs Evans was seized with a small, tickling cough, and Grizel, looking at her, met a glance of warning. She hesitated, and compromised.
“I hardly know her, of course. She must be nice if he likes her. He is a charming man.”
Mrs Gardiner allowed herself the relief of a phantom sniff. Mrs Beverley she considered was putting on “side.” She had known Dane and Teresa for precisely the same length of time, yet she spoke of one as a friend, of the other as the merest acquaintance. It was but another example of county versus town, and as such to be personally resented.
“I am very much attached to Teresa Mallison. She is a very nice, well-brought-up girl. She will make him an excellent wife. I think he is very much to be congratulated,” she said stiffly, and the little speech was memorable, inasmuch as it was the only one delivered in the High Street that day, in which Dane himself was singled out for congratulation!
“Are you walking towards home, Mrs Beverley? Perhaps we might go so far together,” said the Vicar’s wife, as Mrs Gardiner nodded adieu, and entered the grocer’s shop, and the two women turned into a side street, composed of those dreary stucco-faced little villas which seem the special abode of insurance agents and dressmakers. The houses continued but a short way, and then gave place to nursery gardens, and scattered habitations of a better type. Grizel hated the mean little houses, not for any sympathy for the inconvenience which they must cause to their inhabitants, but because she herself was bound to pass them on her way to the High Street. She amused herself by planning wholesale fires, in which entire terraces would be devoured, and in a hazy, indefinite fashion had decided that such a catastrophe would be profitable for the insurance agents, as well as for herself. Trying for the dressmakers, of course, but then dressmakers spent their lives in being trying to other people. Let them take their turn!
This morning, however, Grizel was oblivious of the villas, she was peering into Mrs Evans’s large face, and saying tentatively: