“You might be of the greatest use. But I know only too well, you would refuse.”
Thus far, Mrs. Presty had been animated by curiosity. She began now to feel vaguely alarmed. “After all that I have done for you,” she answered, “I don’t think you ought to say that. Why should I refuse?”
Catherine hesitated.
Her mother persisted in pressing her. “Has it anything to do with Captain Bennydeck?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
Catherine roused her courage.
“You know what it is as well as I do,” she said. “Captain Bennydeck believes that I am free to marry him because I am a widow. You might help me to tell him the truth.”
“What!!!”
That exclamation of horror and astonishment was loud enough to have been heard in the garden. If Mrs. Presty’s hair had been all her own, it must have been hair that stood on end.