“We have not much time to spare,” he said; “there is a train at one o’clock. If we catch that we can then get a special once we reach the main line. But how are you to get over to the station? How did you come here?”
“I walked,” she answered, “but Mrs. Urkirs will allow one of her men to drive me back, I know.” And so it was settled that they should start immediately, and while Basil went out to speak about putting in the horse, Phemie talked to Mrs. Urkirs, and with that individual’s assistance equipped herself for the journey.
When everything had been prepared for their departure; when Mrs. Stondon, duly wrapped up, was seated in Mr. Urkirs’ light cart; when Basil was mounted, and the boy whom he meant to take charge of his horse to Goresby had nestled down into the body of the vehicle, behind Phemie and the driver, the former stooped over the wheel and whispered to Mrs. Urkirs—who had come out to see that the rug was so disposed as to keep her visitor’s dress from being splashed—stooped and whispered—
“The child is dead, and I want to break it to him gently as we go home.”
“I would rather she had the breaking of it to him than I,” remarked Mr. Goresby when Mrs. Urkirs, an hour subsequently, communicated to that gentleman the piece of information she had gained.
Mr. Goresby was a fresh, hearty, middle-aged squire, of the men-who-have-no-nonsense-about-them stamp, and he did feel most grievously sorry to hear of the misfortune that had fallen on his friend.
“Was this Mrs. Stondon a young woman?” he asked—standing beside the door of the farm-house, with his arm through his horse’s bridle, and his foot keeping turning—turning a loose stone as he spoke.
“Over thirty, I should think, sir,” was the reply. “Tall and stately-looking, and proud, seemingly, till you came to speak to her, but then she was just as pleasant and homely as yourself. She sat there in that corner by the fire, and cried when she talked about the child as she might if it had been one of her own. It was wonderful of her coming all this way by herself; there are few ladies, I am thinking, would have done it.”
“You are right there, Mrs. Urkirs,” answered the squire, and he mounted his hack and rode leisurely home to Goresby Manor, wishing to himself he had seen Phemie, and marvelling whether she was the former love he had once heard the mistress of Marshlands twitting her husband concerning.
“I suppose there is a woman at the bottom of every misfortune that happens to a man, if we could only search deep enough,” decided Mr. Goresby, who, being a bachelor, had always felt an intense curiosity to know the ins and outs of whatever love affair it was in Basil Stondon’s past which had, as he mentally rounded the sentence, “put his life all wrong.”