“I am anxious about Alys, I suppose,” she said to herself, “and sorry to have been obliged to disappoint her. If she knew, what would she think or feel? would she ever wish to see me again? I hardly think so, and I could never be at ease in her presence. Another reason in favour of my decision. Yet I wish I could have avoided saying some of the things I did—even to him. Oh, if only I could forget all about it!”
For, notwithstanding all the strength of mind she brought to bear on the subject, that scene in the wood Mary could not succeed in banishing from her thoughts. Over and over again it rose up before her, leaving behind it each time, it seemed to her, a sharper sting of pain, a more humiliating sense of self-reproach. Yet how and where had she been wrong? Was it not better to be honest at all costs? Over and over again she determined to banish it finally from her memory, but no sooner had she done so than some trifle—the sight of a primrose in Francie’s hat, or some apparently entirely disconnected allusion, would bring it back again as vividly as ever, and, with a certain fascination that Mary could not explain to herself, every word that Mr Cheviott had said, every change of expression that had come over his face, would repeat themselves to her imagination. Was it true? she asked herself, was it true what he had said to her?—but for her previous knowledge of his real character, but for the deep-dyed “prejudice,” as he had called it, against him in her mind, could she ever have grown to care for this man? Surely not—yet why did this assertion of his recur to her so often, and not altogether in the sense of re-arousing her indignation?
“He is like two people in one,” she said to herself, “but as to which is the real one, facts, fortunately, leave me in no doubt. And yet I am sorry to have wounded him so deeply, little as he cared for the feelings of others.”
“You look tired, Mary dear,” said her mother, when, after the early Rectory breakfast, Mary was preparing as usual to collect her sisters and little Brooke for lessons in the school-room. “Don’t you think you might leave the children to manage for themselves one other day? You need rest, I am sure, after all you have gone through.”
“No, mother dear, I am really not tired,” said Mary. “I only feel rather—I don’t know how—dissipated, I suppose, unsettled, or whatever you like to call it.”
“That only means tired, dear,” repeated her mother, fondly, so fondly—for Mrs Western was not, as a rule, demonstrative with her children—that Mary felt angry with herself for not being able to respond more gratefully to her solicitude, for, in fact, feeling rather irritated than soothed by it.
“But I have really had nothing to tire me, mother,” she persisted. “Alys Cheviott was as considerate as possible, and, except the first two nights, I had no watching or anxiety. It was hardly to be called ‘nursing’.”
“Perhaps not,” allowed Mrs Western, “but there was the constraint and discomfort of the life—above all, the enforced intercourse with that disagreeable man—that Mr Cheviott, whom you dislike so. I really cannot tell you, Mary dear, how much I have admired your unselfishness and moral courage during this trying time. But you will never regret it. Who knows how much good you may have done that poor girl for all her life—poor I cannot but call her, notwithstanding her riches and position, and everything—fatherless and motherless, and with such a cold, selfish brother as her only protector.”
“He is a very good brother to her, mother. I cannot but confess that I was astonished at his devotion and tenderness to her, and they are deeply attached to each other,” said Mary, her colour rising a little as she spoke. “I am afraid, mother, I sometimes am too wholesale in my opinion of people. Once I take a dislike to them it is difficult for me to see any good in them. I want to correct this in myself.”
“You are so honest, dear,” said her mother.