“I hear from the Bertrams that Mr Gresham has been down at Merle, but only for a short time,” she wrote. “They will be seeing him in town next week when they go up. He has been very busy about something or other, I forget what—oh, yes, I know—some electioneering through an unexpected vacancy.” And at the very end she added: “I forgot to give you Aline Worthing’s love, though I faithfully promised her to do so. They left Cannes the same day you did, but by a different route, so I did not see them again there, but we came across them in Paris.”
These two fragments of gossip did not detract from the generally pleasurable feeling which Miss Lermont’s letter left on her cousin’s mind. She was glad to know that Mr Gresham had been “unusually busy,” for—a girl’s fancy is an unmanageable thing—in spite of her strong self-control, Philippa, at the bottom of her heart, knew that she was not always mistress of her own thoughts. And now that several weeks had elapsed since her return and his, for he had told her he meant to be soon in England again, and he had made no sign, not even a letter to Evelyn, certain painful possibilities had now and then suggested themselves. Had the woman, Bailey, who, for some reason or other, seemed to have become her enemy, had Bailey done or said something? Had she retailed her discovery to Mrs Worthing, and had Mrs Worthing—a faint sick feeling came over Philippa at this stage of her conjectures, and she went no further with them, for what sort of interpretation a coarse, vulgar mind might give to what she had done, she was at a loss to imagine.
“She would probably say I had done it for a wager, or some hateful practical joke—just the kind of thing he would abhor,” she thought.
So in addition to the satisfaction of learning that Mr Gresham had been unusually occupied, was that of hearing that the Worthings had left Cannes so quickly.
“They cannot have met again,” thought Philippa to herself. And her heart grew lighter at once.
“If only,” she went on thinking, “if only I knew him well enough, or—or had any reason for telling him all about it—the whole story—what a relief it would be! And even Michael Gresham, rough and ready as he is, so different from his cousin, once he knew the whole, was really kind and I don’t think he looked down upon me for it. What he hated, I can see now, was the feeling that I was deceitful and unstraightforward. And Mr Gresham understands shades of thought and feeling so wonderfully—almost like a woman. Oh, no, it could not do me any harm in any real friend’s opinion if I could tell it all myself in the first place.”
And perhaps she was right.
“Philippa,” said Evelyn, one morning, “I have ever so many messages for you from Mrs Shepton—dutiful regards or affectionate respects, or something of that kind. She was sorely put to it to find out how to express herself correctly, with proper respect, I mean, and yet with the affection she really does feel for you. She is a nice woman and so devoted to Bonny. I only hope—” But here Mrs Marmaduke Headfort hesitated.
“Go on,” said Philippa, “I don’t mind any allusions now. And I love Mrs Shepton. Nothing she could say would vex me.”
“You are wrong for once,” said Evelyn. “It wasn’t anything about you I was going to say. It was only that I do devoutly hope if ever I come to be—well, at the head of things at Wyverston, that I shall find Mrs Shepton still there. And I hesitated, because it seems horridly cold-blooded to think of the dear old squire’s death.”