“Oh! let us hope she will recover her senses and return to her home. I feel terribly distressed about it, as it was in my house she met Monsieur Fontenelle.”
“No! She met him first at Miss Page’s,” corrected Mrs. Carfax. “I thought he seemed very attentive that evening. He was talking to her a long time after dinner.”
Madame Didier looked up sharply from her work.
“Who is this Miss Page?” she asked. “How does she come to know Monsieur Fontenelle?”
“She’s a most charming woman. We are very proud of her at Dymfield. I suppose she met Monsieur Fontenelle abroad. She has travelled a great deal.”
“Ah!” Madame Didier took another thread of silk, and matched it carefully.
“I only wondered,” she went on, “because Madge was so reticent about her. Naturally, when I saw her becoming so very intimate with Monsieur Fontenelle, I inquired about the woman who was responsible for the first introduction. But I could gather nothing from Madge except that Miss Page was a beautiful woman, and apparently a paragon of all the virtues.”
Madame Didier sniffed slightly, and began to fold up her work.
“She’s certainly a striking looking woman, and most generous and charitable,” returned Mrs. Carfax. “My husband would not know what to do without her financial and other help, in the parish. Certainly we know very little about her life before she settled at Dymfield ten years ago,” she added rather uncertainly.
“Good works are the modern equivalent for the convent, aren’t they?” suggested Madame Didier.