‘To be sure,’ cried Mrs. Mountford gratefully. To make a movement of any kind was a good thing; ‘it must be time to dress for dinner. One feels quite out here, with no bell to tell us what to do. I suppose it wouldn’t do for Saymore, with other people in the house, to ring a dressing-bell. One is lost without a dressing-bell,’ the good lady said. She had her work and her wools all scattered about, though in the emotion of the moment she had not been working. Now she gathered them all in her arms, and, with much content that the afternoon was over, went away.
‘Do you ever have things to sign that want witnesses, Anne?’
‘No,’ said Anne, looking up surprised. ‘Why do you ask? Sometimes a lease, or something of that sort,’ she said.
‘Then perhaps it was a lease,’ said Rose to herself. She did not utter this audibly, or give any clue to her thoughts, except the ‘Oh, nothing,’ which is a girl’s usual answer when she is asked what she means. And then they all went to dress for dinner, and nothing more could be said.
Nothing more was said that night. As soon as it was dusk, Mrs. Mountford retired to her room. It had been a fatiguing day, and everything had been brought back, she said. Certainly her handkerchief was quite damp. Worth was very sympathetic as she put her mistress to bed.
‘Strangers is safest,’ Worth said; ‘I always did say so. There’s no need to keep up before them, and nothing to be pushed back upon you. Trouble is always nigh enough, without being forced back.’
And Rose, too, went to bed early. She had a great deal of her mother in her. She recognised the advantage of getting rid of herself, if not in any more pleasant way, then in that. But she could not sleep when she wished, which is quite a different thing from going to bed. She seemed to see as plainly as possible, dangling before her, with all its red seals, the packet which was to be opened on her twenty-first birthday. Why shouldn’t it be opened now? What could it matter to anyone, and especially to papa, whether it was read now or two years hence? Rose was nineteen; from nineteen is not a long step to one-and-twenty. And what if that packet contained the paper that Saymore had witnessed? She had told Anne she ought to open it. She had almost opened it herself while Anne looked on. If she only could get at it now!
Next morning a remarkable event occurred. Anne drove out with Mr. Loseby to see the Dower-house at Lilford, and report upon it. The old lawyer was very proud as she took her seat by him in his high phaeton.
‘I hope everybody will see us,’ he said. ‘I should like all the people in the county to see Queen Anne Mountford in the old solicitor’s shay. I know some young fellows that would give their ears to be me, baldness and all. Every dog has his day, and some of us have to wait till we are very old dogs before we get it.’
‘Remember, Anne,’ said Mrs. Mountford, ‘that if it is the least damp I will have nothing to do with it.’