Miss Watling's envy of Dorothy was greatly diminished by her exaltation to rank and fortune. She was now too far above her to provoke competition, and she began to praise what she could not pull down.
Mrs. Lane was right, when she anticipated the hearty congratulations of Mrs. Barford; even Letty stopped her churn, and, clapping her hands, said:
"Who wud ha' thought that we shud ever have a titled lady for a dairy maid, or that a countess wud nurse my boy, Tommy. It do seem jist like a fairy tale."
"Yes," returned old Mrs. Barford, "and Dorothy may be considered as the queen of the fairies. If Gilbert's in England, I wonder what he will say to all this? As to Dorothy, she had a good miss of him. They do say that he made that other woman a wretched husband."
"I'm thinking," said Letty, sententiously, "that it wor the wretch o' a woman that made him a bad wife. What he could see in that dirty, impudent wench, Martha Wood, to run off wi' un, 'stonishes I more than's marrying yon stuck up Gallimaufry from Lunnon."
"Nothing need astonish you, Letty, that is done by a drunken man. But in this matter of Dorothy Chance, Lawrence Rushmere was more to blame than his son, and a fine mess he has made of it. Howsomever, I don't believe that people can marry just whom they like. God mates them, and not man, or we should not see such strange folk come together."
"If that be true, mother," cried Letty, with unusual vivacity, "how can yer go on from day to day, fretting an' nagging, an' blaming Joe for marrying I? If I had to be his wife, he wor forced to take I, whether or no."
This was rather a poser to Mrs. Barford's favourite theory, on which much might be said for and against, and which still remains an unsolved enigma. The old lady was wont to excuse her own imprudent marriage on the score of its being her fate. She took up her knitting and began rattling her pins vigorously, as if perfectly unconscious of her daughter-in-law's sensible remark.
There was one, however, to whom the change in Dorothy's social position brought no joy, producing the most bitter disappointment, and giving rise to vindictive and resentful feelings. This was Gilbert Rushmere.
Before leaving Heath Farm with Martha Wood, he had secured a tolerably large sum of money by the sale of the farm horses, which had been accomplished without the knowledge of his father. With this sum, it was his intention of taking his passage to America; but meeting in London some of his gambling associates, they had prevailed upon him to stay, until fleeced in his turn of all his ill-gotten store, he was reduced to the necessity of acting as a decoy duck, in a low tavern, which was the common resort of men even yet more fallen and degraded than himself.