They shook hands in silence. Mr. Knivett crossed over to the inn, where the fly waited to convey himself and Captain Scott to Stilborough; and the Master of Greylands had then commenced his walk homewards, taking the road that would lead him through Chapel Lane.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
MISS HALLET IN THE DUST.
Miss Hallet stood in the parlour of her pretty cottage on the cliff. For a wonder, she was doing nothing--being usually a most industrious body. As she stood upright in deep thought, her spare, straight, up-and-down figure motionless, her pale face still, it might be seen that some matter was troubling her mind. The matter was this: Jane (as she phrased it to herself) was getting beyond her.
A week or more had elapsed since the night Jane had made the accident to Polly Gleeson an excuse for staying out late. Children could not be burnt every night,--and yet the fault continued. Each night, since then, had she been out, and stayed later than she ought to stay: a great deal later than her aunt considered was at all proper or expedient. On the previous night, Miss Hallet had essayed to stop it. When Jane put on her cloak to take what she called her run down the cliff, Miss Hallet in her stern, quiet way, had said, "You are not going this evening, Jane." Jane's answer had been, "I must go, aunt; I have something to do"--and went.
"What's to be done if she won't mind me?" deliberated Miss Hallet. "I can't lock her up: she's too old for it. What she can possibly want, flying down the cliff night after night, passes my comprehension. As to sitting with Goody Dance or any other old fish-wife, as Jane sometimes tells me she has been doing, I don't believe a word of it. Its not in the nature of young girls to shut themselves up so much with the aged. Why, I have heard Jane call me old behind my back--and I want a good twenty or thirty years of old Dame Dance's age."
Miss Hand stopped a minute, to listen to sounds overhead. Jane was up there making the beds. She soon resumed her reflections.
"No, it's not Mother Dance, or any other old mother. It's her love of tattle and gossip. When young girls can get together, they'd talk of the moon if there was no other subject at hand--chattering geese! But that there's not a young chap in all the village that Jane would condescend to look at, I might think she had picked up a sweetheart. She holds herself too high for any of them. And quite right too: she is above them. They are but a parcel of poor fishers: and as to that young Pike, who serves in his father's shop, he has no more sense in him, and Jane knows it, than a kite's tail. No, it's not sweethearts! it's dawdling and gossip along with Susan Pike and the rest of the foolish girls. But oh, how things have changed!--to think that Jane Hallet should consort with such!"
Miss Hallet lifted her eyes to the ceiling, as though she could see through it what Jane was about. By the sound it seemed that she was sweeping the carpet.
"She is a good girl on the whole; I own that," went on Miss Hallet. "Up betimes in a morning, and keeping steady to whatever she has to do, whether it may be housework or sewing: and never gadding in the day-time. The run in the evening does her good, she says: perhaps so: but the staying late doesn't. I don't like to be harsh with her," continued Miss Hallet, after a pause. "She stands alone, save for me, now her brother's gone--and she grieves after him still. Moreover, I am not sure that Jane would stand any harsh authority, if I did put it forth. Poor George would not--though I am sure I only wanted to control him for his good: he went off and made a home for himself down in the village: and Jane has a touch of her brother's spirit. There's the difficulty."