While this was going on at the Rectory, Anne for her part was submitting to a still more severe course of interrogation. Mrs. Mountford had discussed the question with herself at some length, whether she should take any notice or not of the domestic convulsion which had occurred under her very eye without having been brought openly to her cognisance. Her husband had of course told her all about it; but Anne had not said anything—had neither consulted her stepmother nor sought her sympathy. After a while, however, Mrs. Mountford sensibly decided that to ignore a matter of such importance, or to make-believe that she was not acquainted with it, would be equally absurd. Accordingly she arranged that Rose should be sent for after dinner to have a dress tried on; which was done, to that young lady’s great annoyance and wrath. Mrs. Worth, Mrs. Mountford’s maid, was not a person who could be defied with impunity. She was the goddess Fashion, La Mode impersonified at Mount. Under her orders she had a niece, who served as maid to Anne and Rose; and these two together made the dresses of the family. It was a great economy, Mrs. Mountford said, and all the county knew how completely successful it was. But to the girls it was a trouble, if an advantage. Mrs. Worth studied their figures, their complexions, and what she called their ‘hidiousiucrasies’—but she did not study the hours that were convenient for them, or make allowance for their other occupations. And she was a tyrant, if a beneficent one. So Rose had to go, however loth. Lady Meadowlands was about to give a fête, a great garden party, at which all ‘the best people’ were to be assembled. And a new dress was absolutely necessary. Wouldn’t it do in the morning?’ she pleaded. But Mrs. Worth was inexorable. And so it happened that her mother had a quiet half-hour in which to interrogate Anne.
The drawing-room was on the side of the house overlooking the flower garden; the windows, a great row of them, flush with the wall outside and so possessing each a little recess of its own within, were all open, admitting more damp than air, and a chilly freshness and smell of the earth instead of the scents of the mignonette. There were two lamps at different ends of the room, which did not light it very well: but Mrs. Mountford was economical. Anne had lit the candles on the writing-table for her own use, and she was a long way off the sofa on which her stepmother sat, with her usual tidy basket of neatly-arranged wools beside her. A little time passed in unbroken quiet, disturbed by nothing but the soft steady downfall of the rain through the great open space outside, and the more distant sound of pattering upon the trees. When Mrs. Mountford said ‘Anne,’ her stepdaughter did not hear her at first. But there was a slight infraction of the air, and she knew that something had been said.
‘Did you speak, mamma?’
‘I want to speak to you, Anne. Yes, I think I did say your name. Would you mind coming here for a little? I want to say something to you while Rose is away.’
Anne divined at once what it must be. And she was not unreasonable—it was right that Mrs. Mountford should know: how could she help but know, being the wife of one of the people most concerned? And the thing which Anne chiefly objected to was that her stepmother knew everything about her by a sort of back way, thus arriving at a clandestine knowledge not honestly gained. It was not the stepmother that was to blame, but the father and fate. She rose and went forward slowly through the partial light—reluctant to be questioned, yet not denying that to ask was Mrs. Mountford’s right.
‘I sent her away on purpose, Anne. She is too young. I don’t want her to know any more than can be helped. My dear, I was very sorry to hear from your father that you had got into that kind of trouble so soon.’
‘I don’t think I have got into any trouble,’ said Anne.
‘No, of course I suppose you don’t think so; but I have more experience than you have, and I am sorry your mind should have been disturbed so soon.’
‘Do you call it so very soon?’ said Anne. ‘I am twenty-one.’
‘So you are; I forgot. Well! but it is always too soon when it is not suitable, my dear.’