"Do you want Judith to marry this man, Therèse?"
"My dear!—is it likely? But if the girl has set her heart on him, it is a nuisance to have him married to a woman who won't commit anything and make it possible...."
"Couldn't he force her to divorce him by...?"
"By committing something himself? Oh no!—she's too sharp for that. Of course, she wants to pay them out, and make it all as uncomfortable as possible. I'm sorry for Judith, but I must say it's a great deal her own fault. Oh dear!—why cannot people be ordinary and reasonable? Hush!—there she is...."
At the sound of an identifying skirt-rustle descending the stairs, the Duchess dropped her voice to say reflectively: "Yes—why can't the woman misbehave herself, and be hanged to her?" She was silent by the time the rustle reached the door. It was Judith, self-possessed, but pallid, who met a cautious half-approach to the burning subject of the day with, "Now do, dear Duchess, be a good woman, and don't ask me questions now. I'm coming over to-morrow, and I'll tell you all about it.... No, really, I can't tell you about it now, if I try; it only makes my head go round."
On which her Grace, telegraphed to aside by slightly raised eyebrows and an almost unperceptible shrug of Lady Arkroyd's shoulders, that seemed to mean, "You see?—Judith all over. I told you!" merged inquiry in mere commiseration. Oh no—she wasn't going to catechize and be odious. Poor child! How ill she was looking! And no wonder! It was all so dreadful. But, at any rate, she, Judith, was not to blame for this terrible mishap. No one would ever believe that!
"I'm not so sure even of that myself," said the young lady wearily. And the Duchess made a mental note that this girl really looked her loveliest in trouble. But this girl did not intend to s'appuyer on the topic. She had only come in just to say a word of greeting, and that she would come over to Thanes to-morrow. And now she must go and lie down, for her head was simply splitting. No; she knew Mr. Taylor was in the next room with the others, but she couldn't stay to talk even to him. Her mother must make her apologies. For this was in what was regarded as the confidential room of the house—the little cabinet off the first staircase landing, with the suite of buhl furniture that belonged to Cardinal Richelieu, or somebody; and the cinquecento Milanese armour, made for Galeazzo Sforza, who was a Monster of Iniquity. It was always spoken of as "the mezzanina room."
This may be enough to make it understood how a complete revelation of the circumstances preceding the accident was still to be made, two days after its occurrence; although pretty shrewd guesses of their general nature were afloat. It was with a sense of relief that Sir Murgatroyd said to his wife, as they came away from Challis's side, satisfied that, for the present at least, his revived powers of speech had lapsed, "Judith has promised to tell me the whole." And it was with a sense of relief that her mother heard him. For the doubt of what story might be still to come was more painful than any probable certainty would have been.
Down in the village and round the Abbey Well, and round Mrs. Fox's cottage and its tenant lying dead, survivors of the Feudal System hung about in groups, and spoke their pristine mother-tongue, an institution that has not been Americanized in Royd, so far. If that tenant's subtenant, the victim or bénéficiare of a recent writ of ejectment, was also hanging about, unseen owing to the Nature of Things, he must have lamented the pain he was giving, and the trouble his survivors were having with his residuum. Our interpretation of Jim Coupland's character favours that view, granting the needful assumptions. But, of course, he may have been extinct, whatever that means. Poor Jim!