She looked insistently at the girl, but not too insistently, lest she roused her suspicions.
“But I should make as light of it as I could, if I were you, and wished the man well, as you say you do!”
“Then if nothing is proved against him, he won’t have to marry her?” inquired the girl eagerly.
“Obviously not. Her husband will have to take her back!”
“Oh,” said Jane Anne, “and Mr. Rivers be just where he was before?”
“Oh, is it Mr. Rivers? I know him slightly.”
“Do you? Do you? Ma’am, then if you know him, will you tell him that Jane Anne Cawthorne is his friend, and wishes him well. Why, I would like to die for him, I would indeed!”
“Then you had better lie for him a little!”
She looked keenly at the girl as she spoke, and with ever so slight an accent on the word whose first letter she had altered, and she had the satisfaction of seeing Jane Anne redden.
“Understate rather than overstate, you know!”