"Where's the difference?" asked Peckaby. "The men be men, out there; and the women be women. I might pertend as I'd had visions and revelations sent to me, and dress myself up in a black coat and a white neck-an-kecher, and suchlike paycock's plumes—I might tar and feather myself if I pleased, if it come to that—and give out as I was a prophit and a Latter Day Saint; but where 'ud be the difference, I want to know? I should just be as good and as bad a man as I be now, only a bit more of a hypocrite. Saints and prophits, indeed! You just come to your senses, Susan Peckaby."
"I haven't lost 'em yet," answered she, looking inclined to beat him.
"You have lost 'em; to suppose as a life, out with them reptiles, could be anything but just what I telled you—a hell. It can't be otherways. It's again human female natur. If you went angry mad with jealousy, just at fancying you see a innocent kiss give upon a girl's face, how 'ud you do, I ask, when it come to wives? Tales runs as them 'saints' have got any number a-piece, from four or five, up to seventy. If you don't come to your senses, Mrs. Peckaby, you'll get a walloping, to bring you to 'em; and that's about it. You be the laughing-stock o' the place as it is."
He swung out at the door, and took his way towards the nearest public-house, intending to solace himself with a pint of ale, in lieu of tea, of which he saw no chance. Mrs. Peckaby burst into a flood of tears, and apostrophised the expected white donkey in moving terms: that he would forthwith appear and bear her off from Peckaby and trouble, to the triumphs and delights of New Jerusalem.
Lionel, meanwhile, went to Roy's dwelling. Roy, he found, was not in it. Mrs. Roy was; and, by the appearance of the laid-out tea-table, she was probably expecting Roy to enter. Mrs. Roy sat doing nothing, her arms hung listlessly down, her head also; sunk apparently in that sad state of mind—whatever may have been its cause—which was now habitual to her. By the start with which she sprang from her chair, as Lionel Verner appeared at the open door, it may be inferred that she took him for her husband. Surely nobody else could have put her in such tremor.
"Roy's not in, sir," she said, dropping a curtsey, in answer to Lionel's inquiry. "May be, he'll not be long. It's his time for coming home, but there's no dependence on him."
Lionel glanced round. He saw that the woman was alone, and he deemed it a good opportunity to ask her about what had been mentioned to him, two or three hours previously, by the Vicar of Deerham. Closing the door, and advancing towards her, he began.
"I want to say a word to you, Mrs. Roy. What were your grounds for stating to Mr. Bourne that Mr. Frederick Massingbird was with Rachel Frost at the Willow Pool the evening of her death?"
Mrs. Roy gave a low shriek of terror, and flung her apron over her face. Lionel ungallantly drew it down again. Her countenance was turning livid as death.
"You will have the goodness to answer me, Mrs. Roy."