“I’m scarcely sorry,” was the outcome of her grave reflection. “It will make a woman of her. She needed a great shock, or a great sorrow to take her out of herself, and make her realize what it would mean to lose her husband.”
It was only while she was choosing flowers for her, that the part of Madge’s confession which concerned herself, came back confusedly to her mind. It gathered greater clearness as she drove towards her hotel, and by the time she reached it, and was sitting by her bedroom fire after dinner, she found herself wondering what would be the outcome of the matter.
That she might be sure of Madge Dakin, her instinct satisfied her. Yet the results of Madame Didier’s inquiries would in all probability, from other sources, reach Dymfield. What then?
Anne’s thoughts flitted from Mrs. Carfax to Mrs. Willcox, the solicitor’s wife, a lady who was interested in Church Missions, and Rescue Homes for Fallen Women. The memory of Miss Goldie, a maiden lady of substantial means, and views of life which even Dymfield considered rigid, came to her, and forced a smile. She saw her sitting in the front pew in church, her black bonnet with two purple pansies upon it, tied tightly under her chin. She saw her angular elbows, under the short mantle of black silk adorned with bugle trimming. She heard her rasping voice, which seldom softened even for Anne, who as a rule affected insensibly the voices of her neighbours.
She remembered Mr. Willcox, stiff, erect, lean-faced Mr. Willcox, loud in his denunciation of the present age, which he considered lax and immoral to the last degree.
She thought of the Vicar, with his blustering attempts at modernity, and his violently expressed scorn of everything but muscular Christianity and common sense.
Dymfield was the typical English village, with its types indigenous to the soil, firmly rooted, impervious to criticism, profoundly self-satisfied.
Dymfield for Anne would be impossible.
But Dymfield meant Fairholme Court, to which her heart was inextricably linked. The garden that she had planted, the garden that was full of fragrant memories of the blossoming time of her life. The bare idea of leaving it sent a pang of desolation to her heart.
She got up and began to walk restlessly about the room.