“But this is such a very quiet place. I should not think that anything ever could happen here?”
“Oh, ma’am, don’t be too sure! Last summer now, something happened here, that if you was to put it into a book, no one would believe it! And I am in it too—leastways I shall be!”
“Tell me about it, if you have time,” said Egidia, “and then perhaps I could work it into something.”
“It is something very serious,” said Jane Anne, her heavy brows coming together. “It is a divorce case. I don’t know as I ought to tell it.”
“A divorce case is known eventually to all the world!” said Egidia sententiously. “Besides, you need not tell me the names!”
“Oh, no, I needn’t then,” said the girl, relieved, “but they are sure to slip out in the course of conversation. But then that won’t be my fault, will it?”
“No,” said the other, concealing her amusement at Jane Anne’s morality. “It will be mine—I hope. Come and sit down here, if you are not too busy, and tell me about it!”
Jane Anne was a little thrown off her majestic balance by the distinguished authoress’s condescension. She sat down, awkward, handsome, interesting even, as a study, but——
“This creature presumes to love Edmund too!” Egidia thought, and hated the mission she had set herself to accomplish, which involved converse, and an assumption of intimacy with her.
“You see, ma’am, it is like this,” began Jane Anne, too humble and modestly conscious of the capacity in which this interview had been granted her, not to begin on it at once. “There is a gentleman, the gentleman who gave me that book, he comes here every year and paints—he always has done—he is not married, leastways we think not!—he is what they call the co-respondent.”