“What is it, then? Can he be so utterly base and dishonourable?”
“Not of himself,” replied Mary, bitterly; “weak fool that he is, he is not so bad as that. No, mother, he is not, or has been made to think he is not, his own master; it is all that man—that bad man’s doing.”
“Whose doing?” said Mrs Western, bewilderedly. “That Mr Cheviott—Mr Cheviott of Romary. Don’t you see the note is dated from there? I see it all; he found it out at the ball. Very likely he went there for the purpose of finding it out, having heard rumours of it, and at once used all his influence, whatever it is, to make that poor fool give it up. And yet he isn’t a poor fool! That is the worst of it; there is so much good in him, and Lilias cares for him—yes, that is the worst of it. Mother, she does care for him. Will it break her heart?”
And Mary, in her innocence and ignorance, looked up to her mother who had gone through life, who must know how it would be, and repeated, wistfully, “Mother, will it break her heart?”
Mrs Western shook her head.
“I do not know—I cannot say; she is so proud. Either it will harden or break her utterly. Oh, Mary, my dear, my instincts were right. Do you remember how I dreaded it from the first?”
“Yes, mother, you were right; nowadays if people are poor, they must forget they are gentle-people. It would be well to bring up Alexa and Josey not to ‘look high,’ as the servants say; a respectable tradesman—Mr Brunt, the Withenden draper’s eldest son, for instance, is the sort of man that girls like us should be taught to encourage—eh, mother?”
“Mary, don’t; you pain me. It is not like you to talk so. If what you say were true, it would make me go back upon it all and think I was wrong to marry your father. He might have done so much better—he, so attractive and popular as he was; he might have married some one rich and—”
“Hush, mother—dear mother, hush,” said Mary, kissing her; “it is wicked of me to pain you,” and in saying these words she determined to tell her mother nothing of her own personal part of the affair, her bitter indignation at the way in which Mr Cheviott had tried to win her over to take part against her sister; and for this reticence she had another, as yet hardly understood, motive—a terrible misgiving was creeping upon her. Was she to blame? Had her plainly expressed defiance and indignation raised Mr Cheviott to more decisive action than he had before contemplated? She could not tell.
“But so mean as he has shown himself, it is perfectly possible that it is so,” she reflected. “He is small-minded enough to be stung into doing what he has by even my contempt, yet how could I have spoken otherwise? though for Lilias’s sake I could almost have made a hypocrite of myself.”