Archie Dunstan followed her with his eyes; but he was not long left in peace.
“Can’t you get Hebe to come away?” said Lady Marth, in a tone that very little more would have rendered querulous. “Rosy has gone now. Everybody has gone. You are as bad as Hebe, Archie. What on earth could you find to talk to that Miss Wandle, or Bracy, or whoever she was, about?”
“She was neither a Miss Wandle nor a Miss Bracy, Lady Marth,” said Mr Dunstan. “I thought you had more discernment,” and he calmly walked away, entirely disregarding her request that he would summon Hebe.
Lady Marth was angry. She had known that the girl he was talking to was not one of the Pinnerton Green tradespeople’s daughters, and she had had a strong suspicion that she was Miss Derwent. But, of course, she was not going to allow this. She had taken one of her violent and unreasonable prejudices to the Derwents, whom she knew almost nothing about, and would not have felt the slightest interest in, had she not found out that Hebe had come across them, and meant or wished to be kind to them. And she was really very much attached to Hebe, and cared for her good opinion. It annoyed her that she had not been herself appealed to by her husband’s ward in the matter, little sympathy though she would have felt about it, as what she called “one of Hebe’s fads.”
Perhaps, on the whole, it had been a mistake on the girl’s part not to have made an effort to enlist Lady Marth’s interest in the Derwents. But she had been afraid to do so, knowing by experience how extraordinarily disagreeable “Josephine” could be to any one she considered beneath her. Still, her reticence had aroused deeper prejudice on Lady Marth’s side than need have been drawn out; and Mr Dunstan’s manner and tone increased it.
Blanche made her way somewhat anxiously to Stasy.
“Do let us go,” said the younger girl in a half-whisper. “I am sure mamma will be wondering why we are so long,” she added in a louder tone, for Mrs Harrowby’s benefit.
“I was only waiting because Lady Hebe wanted to say something to me,” said Blanche; and Hebe, who had said good-bye by this time to Miss Wandle and her cousin, came hurrying up.
“I won’t keep you any longer just now,” she said, for she had an instinctive dread of Lady Marth; “I am so sorry. Just tell me this—can you meet me here alone some afternoon to look over the account-books, so that it may all be quite clear to you?”
Blanche hesitated. Why should they meet “here?” She could understand Hebe’s not asking her to go to East Moddersham, considering that Lady Marth had not seen fit to call upon Mrs Derwent, but why should not Hebe offer to come to Pinnerton Lodge herself? She glanced up. Hebe was slightly flushed, her lips were parted, and she seemed a little anxious. The expression was new to Blanche on that usually untroubled face, and it touched her. Blanche’s dignity was too simple and true for her to think much about what was “due” to it.