“I suppose so. She was away long enough to make shoals of them.”
“You didn’t know her, George, did you, when you were a young man?”
The Vicar shook his head. “I may have seen her once or twice when she was old Mrs. Burbage’s companion. I had just left college then, and was at my first curacy in Nottingham—just before we were married, you know. I came back to the Vicarage once or twice in those days to see the old Dad, and I suppose she must have been at Fairholme Court then. But I don’t remember her. She was nurse and general factotum to the old lady. Mrs. Burbage was an eccentric woman, you know; rather dotty towards the end, I believe. I can imagine that poor Miss Page hadn’t much of a life with her.”
“And then directly she had the place left to her, she shut it up and went away?”
“Yes. That must be nearly twenty years ago. How time flies!”
“I remember we came to the Vicarage just after she had gone, when Sylvia was a baby; the year after your father died. It was a nine-days’ wonder then. And I remember the people at The Chase saying what a piece of luck it was for such a dowdy quiet woman to come into a fortune.”
“They can’t say that now!” observed the Vicar.
“No. I never was so surprised in my life as the first time I saw her. That must be ten years ago now, George?”
“Yes. She was away ten years, and she’s been back at the Court nearly the same time. That makes it about twenty years, as I thought. Dear me, it seems impossible!”
“She doesn’t alter at all, does she? Her hair may have got a little whiter since I first saw her, but I believe she’s prettier even. Well! Foreign travel must be wonderful if it can change a plain, dowdy creature into a woman like Miss Page.”