She looked at him again for a moment with a sort of consternation. ‘There you are making a mistake, my dear—for my own. Because I did not choose that there should ever be a remark.’
He put his hand upon her arm with a heavy pressure. ‘Elizabeth, I am dreadfully perplexed; but I think, if I am not wrong, that I have come upon the settlement of all that question; of everything—of what has hung over us. I think, my dear, that all is right—that all has been right from the very beginning.’ He stopped a little, and then added, drawing a long breath, ‘I never had any doubt of it myself.’
A gleam, half of anger, half of fun, darted up into her bright eyes, and flashed like an arrow of light at him, which the good man did not even see, and which ended, on her part, with a quick laugh, in which there was a little amusement, a little excitement, though not very much expectation. ‘You never had any doubt!’ she said. Then she added, with a half sigh of impatience— ‘Tell me all about your new discovery, and we’ll pull it to pieces and see if there’s anything in it. Have we a long drive before us? Is there time to get it all out?’
‘Plenty of time; and, oh, the comfort to know that you are here, and to be able to tell you! I will do what you like best, Elizabeth. I will tell you all the facts, and then you can judge for yourself. I came to Bellendean, you know, nearly a week ago. There has been all sorts of things going on. Great dinners, and all the fine people of the county—and then the tenantry. It is a—a tidy estate—a number of tenants—not small farms like what we are used to, but men, you know, whom really I should have taken for country gentlemen—men paying big rents, and able to make speeches—and—and that sort of thing.’
Mrs. Hayward kept her eyes upon her husband’s face. She was used, it was evident, to long explanations, and expected them, and had learned that patience which comes of necessity. He knew this fact, that she always heard him out, and never interrupted him, as other people did. But what he did not know, was that a thrill of natural impatience, never altogether overcome, was in the veins of the little woman who sat by him, keeping him to the point with her eyes, never interrupting him in any other way. ‘Yes,’ she said, when he paused to take breath: but that was all.
‘Yes; and then, last of all, there was a supper to the labourers and cottagers. Well, no, not exactly last of all, for the last was the children’s entertainment—the school-feast we should have called it, but they don’t say school-feast here—a sort of gathering in the afternoon, you know, with a band and games, and tea in a great tent, and—you know?’
‘Yes, I know what a school-feast is.’
‘Well!’—he drew a long breath now, and settled himself down in a manner which betokened, as his wife by long experience knew, that he was about coming to the point; but she could scarcely believe it after so short a preamble. ‘The first thing that happened was at the labourers’ supper: we were all walking about, and I for my part said a word now and then, while they were cheering Norman Bellendean—that he was a good fellow, you know, and all that—the sort of thing one would say at an affair of the kind, when you do think well of the fellow, you know, and get into the swim——’
‘Yes?’ said Mrs. Hayward again.
‘Well then. I had the very words in my mouth, when at the end of one of the tables, between an old man and an old woman, evidently cottagers, I saw—I declare to you, Elizabeth, my heart leapt into my mouth—I was choked, I could not say another syllable. I saw her as clear as I see you.’