“And, to be sure, they’re a rough lot,” Mrs. Toft continued, dropping her apron. “I’m not forgetting what happened to the reverend Colet, and I wish the young master safe out of it. It’s all give and no take with him, too much for others and too little for himself! I’m thinking if anybody’s hurt he’ll be there or thereabouts.”
Mary turned. “Is Petch—couldn’t Petch go down and——”
“La, Miss,” Mrs. Toft answered—the girl’s face told her all that she wished to know—“Petch don’t dare, with his lordship on the other side! But, all said and done, I’ll be bound the young master’ll come through. It’s a pity, though,” she continued thoughtfully, as she began to dust the sideboard, “as people don’t know their own minds. There’s the Squire, now. He’s lived quiet and pleasant all these years and now he must dip his nose into this foolishness, same as if he dipped it into hot worts when Toft’s a-brewing! I don’t know what’s come to him. He goes riding up to Blore these winter nights, twenty miles if it’s a furlong, when this house is his! He’s more like to take his death that way, if I’m a judge.”
“Is he doing that?” Mary asked in a small voice.
“To be sure,” Mrs. Toft returned. “What else! Which reminds me, Miss, are those papers to go to the bank to-day?”
“I believe so.”
“Well, you’re looking that peaky, you’d best take a jaunt with them. Why not? It’s a fine day, and if there is a bit of a clash there’s none will hurt you. Do you go, Miss, and get a little color in your cheeks. At worst, you’ll bring back the news and I’m sure we’re that dead-alive and moped a little’s a godsend!”
“I think I will go,” Mary said.
So when the gig, which was to convey the boxes to the bank, arrived about three, she mounted beside the driver. Here, were it only for an hour, was distraction and a postponement of that need to decide, to choose between two courses, which was crushing her under its weight.
For Mary was very unhappy. That moment which had proved to her that she did not love the man she was to marry and did love another, had stamped itself on her memory, never to be wiped from it. In Audley’s company, and for a time after they had parted, the shock had numbed her mind and dulled her feelings. But once alone and free to think, she had grasped all that the discovery meant—to her and to him; and from that moment she had not known an instant of ease.