Mary smiled rather sadly.
"They seem to be the only things that interest her now."
"What, the deans? I know. It's intolerable. She went to speak to the postman just now while I was with her, and I looked at the book she had been reading with her mark in it. I should like to have thrown it into the pond! Some tiresome canon or other writing to a friend about Eternal Punishment. What does he know about it? I should like to ask! I declare I hope he may know something more about it some day! There was your mother as white as her ruffles, with dark lines under her eyes. I tell you clerical intimidation should be made a punishable offence. It's just as bad as any other!"
Mary let her run on. She moved silently along the grassy path, her pretty head bent, her hands clasped behind her. And presently her aunt resumed: "And the strange thing is, my dear, saving your presence—that your beloved mother is quite lax in some directions, while she is so strict in others. I never can make her pay the smallest attention to the things I tell her about Philip Meryon, for instance, that Hugh tells me. 'Poor fellow!' she always calls him, as though his abominable ways were like the measles—something you couldn't help. And as for that wild minx Hester!—she has positively taken a fancy to her. It reminds me of what an old priest said to me once in Rome—'Sins, madame!—the only sins that matter are those of the intellect!' There!—send me off—before I say any more inconvenances!"
Mary waved farewell to her vivacious aunt, and walked slowly back to the cottage. She was conscious of inner smart and pain; conscious also for the first time of a critical mind toward the mother whose will had been the law of her life. It was not that she claimed anything for herself; but she claimed justice for a man misread.
"If they could only know each other!"—she found herself saying at last aloud—with an impetuous energy; and then, with a swift return upon herself—"Mother, darling!—mother, who has no one in the world—but me!"
As the words escaped her, she came in sight of the cottage, and saw that her mother was sitting in her usual place beside the water. Catharine's hands were resting on a newspaper they had evidently just put down, and she was gazing absently across the lights and shadows, the limpid blues and browns of the tree-locked pool before her.
Mary came to sit on the grass beside her.
"Have you been reading, dearest?"
But as she spoke she saw, with discomfort, that the newspaper on her mother's knee was the Church Guardian, in which a lively correspondence on the subject of Meynell and the Modernist Movement generally was at the moment proceeding.