Corinna sat for a long time, frozen to her soul, looking out of her bedroom window at the hopeless autumn drizzle, and the sodden leaves on the paths of the vicarage garden. Then, with quivering lips, she sat down at the rickety little desk that had been hers since childhood and wrote to Bigourdin. She sealed it and went out in the rain and dropped it in the nearest pillar box. When she reached her room again, the realisation of the inadequacy of her words smote her. She threw herself on her bed and sobbed. After which she wrote her wild letter to Félise.
For the next few days a chastened Corinna went about the Vicarage. An unusual gentleness manifested itself in her demeanour, and at last emboldened Mrs. Hastings, good, kind soul, to take the unprecedented step of enquiring into her wayward and sharp-tongued daughter’s private affairs.
“I’m afraid, dearie, that letter you had from France contained bad news.”
“Yes, mother,” said Corinna, with a sigh.
They were alone in the drawing room. Mrs. Hastings laid aside her knitting, rose slowly—she was a portly woman—and went across to Corinna and put her arm about her shoulders.
“Can’t you tell me what it was, dearie?” she whispered.
Corinna melted to the voice. It awakened memories of unutterable comfort of childish years. She surrendered to the embrace.
“Yes, mother. The truest man I have ever known—a Frenchman—is dying over there. He asked me to marry him a year ago. And I was a fool, mother. Oh! an awful fool!”
And half an hour later, she said tearfully: “I’ve been a fool in so many ways. I’ve misjudged you so, mother. It never occurred to me that you would understand.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Hastings, stroking her hair, “to bring ten children into the world and keep them going on small means, to say nothing of looking after a husband, isn’t a bad education.”