"Wasn't it, as things go, rather a malicious way of putting it—on their part?"
Mrs. Arkwright gave sagacious nods, indicative of comfortable "we-know-the-world-we-live-in-and-won't-pretend" relationships between herself and the speaker. They advertised perfect mutual understanding on a pinnacle of married experience. Fancy there being any need for anything else between us! they said. Their editor then supplied explanatory text: "Of course there may have been a soupçon of personal feeling in the case—bias, pique, whatever one likes to call it. You know, dear Mrs. Fenwick?" But Mrs. Fenwick waited for further illumination. "Well, you know ... I suppose it's rather a breach of confidence, only I know I shall be safe with you...."
"Don't tell me any secrets, Mrs. Arkwright. I'm not safe." But Mrs. Arkwright was not a person to be put off in this way. Not she! She meant elucidation, and nothing short of bayonets would stop her.
"Well, really, perhaps I'm making it of too much importance to
talk of breaches of confidence. After all, it only amounts to a gentleman having been disappointed. Of course, his relations would ... don't you see?..."
"Was it some man that was after Tishy?" asked Rosalind, wondering how many more rejected suitors were wearing the willow about the haberdasher's bride. She had heard of one, only last night. She was not putting two and two together.
"I dare say everybody knows it, and it's only my nonsensical caution. But one does get so timorous of saying anything. You know, dear Mrs. Fenwick! However, it's better to say it out now—of course, quite between ourselves, you know. It was Mrs. Samuel Herrick's son, Sir Charles Penderfield. He's the present baronet, you know. Father was in the army—rather distinguished man, I fancy. Her second husband was a clergyman...." Here followed social analysis, some of which Rosalind could have corrected. The speaker floundered a little among county families, and then resumed the main theme. "Mrs. Herrick is a sort of connexion of my husband's (I don't exactly know what; but then, I never do know—family is such a bore), and it was she told him all about this. I always forget these things when they're told me. But I can quite understand that the young man's mother, in speaking of it ... you understand?..."
"Oh, of course, naturally. I think my daughter's coming out. I saw her machine-door move." Rosalind began collecting herself for departure.
"But, of course, you won't repeat any of this—but, of course, I know I can rely upon you—but, of course, it doesn't really matter...." A genial superior tone of toleration for mankind's foibles as seen by the two speakers from an elevation comes in at this point juicily. It meets an appreciative response in the prolonged first syllable of Rosalind's "Certainly. I never should dream," etc., whose length makes up for an imperfect finish—a dispersal of context from which a farewell good-morning emerges clear, hand-in-hand with a false statement that the speaker has enjoyed sitting there talking.
Rosalind had not enjoyed it at all. She was utilising the merpussy's return to land as a means of escape, because, had there been no Mrs. Arkwright, and no folk-chatter, Sally would have come