“Ah, the Vanes!” his mother replied, with a relaxation of all the lines in her face; and then she smiled, and said, “Come, Nelly. I hope the humours of the nunnery will blow some of our cobwebs away.”
Jenny thought the metaphor very confused as he went out, leaving them to their packing, and, no doubt, to confidences more distinct than Nelly had given to himself. But he was a lad of understanding, and he perceived all that had happened. Yes, the metaphor was very confused—how could humours blow cobwebs away? There was this to be said about women certainly, that the language they used was very often inexact, though it might be forcible enough. For instance, Jenny acknowledged to himself his mother could polish off a fellow very neatly when occasion served—and he had no doubt she would polish off Molyneux in a way that would leave nothing to be desired. But still the metaphor was confused; he was thinking how to put it when he encountered Vane, who had a restless way of taking walks abroad when there was nothing else to be done. Jenny joined himself to the elder man whom he admired, and went over the town with him, looking at the public buildings with vague curiosity. The Assizes were still going on, and groups standing about the Town Hall, as they had been when poor Innocent stood at the bar; but to Innocent’s cousins it seemed that it was years since the trial had ended, though they paused, and looked with a long-drawn breath at the place where other people might be suffering the same anxieties which now had ended for them.
“I wonder,” said Jenny, bringing this perennial train of thought suddenly in, to break the lighter tone of their conversation—“I wonder if Molyneux is right—if she’ll never get over it as long as she lives.”
“If——who——will never get over it?” asked Vane.
“Innocent; that’s what he said—I suppose he knows Society, and that sort of thing; though she was acquitted twenty times—that she would never get over it as long as she lived.”
“All that comes very well from Molyneux,” said Vane, growing red, “who has never done anything, so far as I know, to help either Innocent—or your family, Jenny—to whom he was beholden——”
“Well,” said Jenny, with an indifferent air, “it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. I believe poor Innocent’s trial has done what nothing else could have done—convinced Nelly at last that this fellow Molyneux——”
“You don’t mean it!” cried Vane.
Jenny, who had taken his arm, felt Vane “jump,” as he said after, and knew that his chance shot had taken full effect.
“But I do,” said Jenny composedly. “I had not time to get it all out of her; but I am quite sure of this much, at least, that all is over between them—and time too. Why, the fellow actually came down here—to see how things were going—and never went near them. Nelly saw him in the court. A girl would be a fool indeed—which Nelly ain’t, for I know the sort of girl she is—if she put up with that——”