But later in the day, when Philippa and her mother were by themselves, Mrs Raynsworth alluded again to the letter.
“There are one or two things Evelyn asked me to tell you, Philippa,” she said. “One was that, as I knew she intended to do, she managed to pay a private visit to that good Mrs Shepton, and to give her the little present I sent her. And she says she had a ‘charming talk with her,’ and feels so much happier now that Mrs Shepton knows more about how it all happened.”
“I am sure I was candid enough about it,” said Philippa. “I scarcely see what more there was for Evey to tell.”
“Not much, I daresay. But I think too that it is satisfactory and only fair to you yourself, under the circumstances, that what you told should have been, as it were, endorsed by a member of your family. And who so well able to do it as Evelyn? I know for her own sake, she was anxious to show Mrs Shepton that she had not joined you in planning the thing, though she had not resoluteness enough to stop it. And I am glad for the housekeeper to know very distinctly what your father and I felt and do feel about it.”
There was a touch of coldness in Mrs Raynsworth’s tone, and a slight inference of reproach which her daughter’s tender conscience felt to be not entirely undeserved. She had not answered as gently as she might have done to her mother.
“Oh, mamma,” she exclaimed. “Of course I know you are always right and wise, but somehow any allusion to that—that time at Wyverston makes me nervous and cross.”
Mrs Raynsworth patted her gently. Philippa had crept up close to her. Evelyn’s letter was still lying open before her.
“There is a long postscript, I see, mamma,” she said. “You did not read it aloud, did you? Is it anything private?”
Mrs Raynsworth hesitated.
“It is and it isn’t,” she replied. “But of course Evelyn would leave it to my discretion to tell you or not. She does ask me not to speak of it to your father or Charley, as Duke wants to tell them himself, once it is settled. Did you know, Philippa—no, I am sure you did not—that the Headforts have considerable property in —shire, not far from that place of Mr Gresham’s, Merle-in-the-Wold?”