Her tone puzzled Miss Norreys.
“You don’t mean to say that the White Weeper had anything to do with your fainting-fit—your fall?” she said.
“N-no,” replied Winifred. “But if she is really so concerned about us all, about me in particular, she might have prevented it somehow, don’t you think?”
Her tone of matter-of-fact discussion of the subject was almost amusing. Winifred would always be Winifred!
“As things have turned out, I scarcely see that the catastrophe affects you or the whole question very much one way or the other,” said Miss Norreys, “except that—Winifred, it must show you how mistaken you have been in thinking you are not deeply cared for and loved.”
“Yes,” said Winifred, flushing a little, “it may have been to show me that.” Then, after a little pause: “Practically, it only affects me in this way, that I had made up my mind to go back to London with you to do my work for a week or two—for nothing, of course,” and here she grew still more flushed, “till they replace me. And I wanted to collect my things and to say good-bye to two or three people—the people where I lodged, amongst them. I have been so interested in them—in the two poor daughters; the father and mother are dreadful people, very often intoxicated,” she added calmly.
“My dear Winifred! And the society recommended such a place for a young girl to live at?” exclaimed Hertha, aghast.
“Oh dear no, I found it out for myself. And I am not a young girl. I was able to be of great use to them. But for me there would have been an execution in the house ever so long ago.”
And then some allusion in Mr Montague’s letter—which, in her newborn anxiety to spare Winifred further mortification, Hertha had determined she should never see, recurred to Miss Norreys’s mind. “It appears she has even set the society’s rules at defiance with regard to her lodgings.” She understood the sentence now.
“I can do any commissions that need to be done for you. I have arranged now to stay till the day after to-morrow, and you will be able to tell me all by then,” she said quietly, thinking in her own mind that it was probably very well that Winifred was not to return to her self-chosen quarters at all. “The White Weeper must have been very wise not to have prevented the accident, even supposing she could have done so,” she thought to herself, while half laughing at her own fancifulness. But the idea suggested a question.