‘Do they really say so? How truly good of them!’ said Mrs. Brown, with a laugh. It was a laugh of so much amusement that Jim, who did not see the joke, was disposed to be angry, but she ended by shaking her head and putting on a comically doleful look. ‘But I do not please everybody,’ she said; ‘oh, far from it. Your friend, Mr. Osborne, does not like me: and your cousin, Miss Mab, is full of suspicions.’
‘Mab,’ said Jim in high disdain, ‘as if it mattered what Mab thought!’
‘Don’t you know,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘that Miss Mab will probably be an heiress one of these days, and that it will matter a great deal what she thinks?’
‘Nonsense,’ cried Jim, ‘as much an heiress as I am! We have no rich relations, alas! to leave us money.’
‘But she may have,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘and if you will take my advice you will go in for your cousin, Mr. Jim; that would make everything straight if you got a nice little bit of money with your wife.’
‘Nonsense,’ cried Jim, becoming scarlet, and feeling the very tips of his ears burn. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘if I ever have a wife I’d rather keep her than that she should keep me.’
‘A very excellent sentiment,’ said his adviser, ‘but I don’t quite see how you are going to carry it out.’
‘I shall carry it out by having no wife at all,’ said Jim: and then he added hastily, ‘that’s not what I came to tell you. Have you any reason for not wanting Swinford to know that you are here?’
‘For not wanting—Swinford—to know——?’ A little colour seemed to rise, too, in her dark countenance. ‘This change of subject,’ she cried, ‘takes away my breath. You are too quick for me. Have I any reason——? It is Leo Swinford you mean, at the Hall?’ As if she did not know who it was! Even Jim was clever enough to perceive that she was simply gaining time. ‘No,’ she answered slowly, ‘I have no particular reason. I do not, perhaps, in a general way wish—to receive—friends who have known me elsewhere, here——’ She looked round upon her little room, with a laugh. ‘You may, perhaps, if you think of it, understand why. Have you come to warn me that I am found out?’
‘Oh no,’ said Jim. ‘And I’m sure I don’t want to interfere; but he was at the Rectory last night. He said he had caught a glimpse of a lady he knew, and had followed her all the way down to the village to speak to her, and she had disappeared. Some one said that no one had passed but Mrs. Brown. And then he laughed and said, “Perhaps it was Mrs. Brown he had seen going to pay a visit to some one in the servants’ hall.”’