Was it, she asked herself, to go on like this always and always? Had she become the wife of Justice Thornycroft only to die of the dreary life at the Red Court Farm? Let us give her her due. When she married him she did intend to do her duty as an honest woman, and send ridiculous flirtations, such as that carried on with Robert Lake, to the winds. But she did not expect to be done to death of ennui.
A short while went on. Nearly open warfare set in between Mary Anne and her stepmother. To-day my lady would be harsh, exacting, almost cruel in her rule; tomorrow the girl would be wholly neglected--suffered to run wild. Mr. Thornycroft saw that things could not continue thus, and the refrain of the words he had spoken to Isaac beat ever on his brain, day by day bringing greater force to them: "I fear I made a mistake; I fear I made a mistake."
One morning Mary Anne astonished the justice by appearing before him in his bureau, in what she was pleased to call the uncivilized rooms. He sat there with Mr. Hopley, of Dartfield, some account books before them. Her dress, a beautiful muslin with a raised blue spot, was torn out at the gathers and trailed behind her. My lady had done it in a passion.
"Holloa! what do you do here?" cried the justice, emphatically; and Mr. Hopley went out whistling, with his hands in his pockets, and crossed over to stare at the idle dog-cart in the coach-house, as if to give privacy for the explanation.
She had come with one of her tales of woe. She had come to beg and pray to be sent to school. What a change! Mr. Thornycroft was nearly at his wits' end.
Ere the day was over, his wife brought a complaint to him on her own score: not altogether of Mary Anne. She simply said, incidentally, that ill-trained young lady was getting quite beyond her control, and therefore she must wash her hands of her. The complaint was of her own health; it appeared to be failing her in a rather remarkable manner, certainly a sudden one. This was true. She had concluded that the air of Coastdown was inimical to her, she wished it might be managed for her to live away--say Cheltenham, or some other healthy place.
How eagerly Mr. Thornycroft caught at the suggestion, he felt afterwards half ashamed to think of. In matters involving money he was always liberal, and he at once named a handsome sum per month that she might enjoy, at Cheltenham, or anywhere else that pleased her.