“I know whom you mean,” replied her hostess. “Miss Cheviott, is it not? Yes, she is exceedingly pretty. You have not seen her, Frances,” she went on to the eldest Miss Morpeth. “I wish you could.”
“Shall we not see her at church on Sunday?” said Miss Morpeth. “Are not the Cheviotts the principal people here, now?”
“Yes,” said Mrs Greville, “but they are a good deal away from home.” Here Mary’s heart almost stopped beating—this was what she had been longing yet dreaded to inquire about—what would become of all her plans should Mr Cheviott be away? But it was not so. “They are a good deal away from home,” Mrs Greville went on, “and there is another church nearer Romary than ours, where they go in the morning. But they very often—indeed, almost always the last few weeks, come to Uxley in the afternoon—Mr Cheviott likes Mr Greville’s preaching better than the old man’s at Romary Moor.”
“That’s not much of a compliment, my dear,” said Mr Greville from the end of the table, “considering that poor old Wells is so asthmatic that you can hardly catch a word he says now.”
A little laugh went round, and under cover of it Mary managed to say gently to Mr Greville:
“Then Mr Cheviott is at Romary now?”
“Oh, yes; saw him this morning riding past,” was the reply.
Mary gave a little sigh of relief, yet her heart beat faster for the rest of the evening.
“I wonder if I must do it to-morrow,” she said to herself, “or not till the day after. I have only the two days to count upon, and supposing he is out and I have to go again! I must try for to-morrow, I think.”
“Romary is just two miles from here, is it not?” she said, in a commonplace tone.