MRS. JEDSLEY’S visit of curiosity and condolence was of a surprisingly consolatory nature. As an old friend, Mrs. Jedsley permitted herself the curiosity; but even from an old friend Lady Paton had not expected a true-ringing generosity of judgment.

“I came, my dear—yes, because I wanted to know. My ears are buzzing with the talk of it—true or false, who can tell? Not even you, I fancy; but I have my own opinion,” said Mrs. Jedsley. “I understand Camelia pretty well; but vulgarly, schemingly cruel—rubbish! rubbish!—so I say!”

That the saying had been at all necessary made poor Lady Paton more white, yet Mrs. Jedsley’s denunciation was so sincere that she took her hands, saying, “How can they! It was a mistake. She found she did not love him. He understands.” Sir Arthur’s parting words had haloed her daughter for her during these difficult days.

“Yes, yes, he is a very fine fellow, and idealizes her tremendously,” said Mrs. Jedsley, with strict justice. “It was, of course, a great shame for her not to have made up her mind long ago—a great shame to have accepted him”—Mrs. Jedsley shore off Camelia’s beams relentlessly—“and a great pity, my dear, that the engagement should have been announced, since a few hours of silence might have shifted the matter, and no one the wiser. But of course we were all as ready as dry kindling for the match—it spread like wildfire—a fine crackling! and then, in a day, a fine cackling! Lady Haversham came running down to me post-haste to say it was off—to wonder, to exult. Of course she is an adherent of the Duchess’s, and Lady Elizabeth has her chance again. But yes, yes, I know the child—a vain child, a selfish child; ah! it pains you; one must face that truth to see beyond it—to others; but not vulgarly cruel. She would not play with the man for months to give herself the feline fun of crunching him at the end of it all. She was playing with herself rather, only half in earnest. The engagement brought her to her senses—held her still; she couldn’t dance, so she thought. Indeed, it’s the first time I’ve respected Camelia. I do respect a person who has the courage to retrieve a false step. It is quite a good enough match to turn a girl into a schemer. At least she has proved she’s not that.”

“No! no! My daughter!”

“Quite true; your daughter; that does count, after all. No, she can’t be accused of husband-hunting.” Mrs. Jedsley laughed dryly. “Now, the question of course remains, who is she in love with?” and she fixed on her friend a gaze so keenly interrogative that it certainly suggested tinder ready to flash alight of itself. “Not our Parliamentary big-wig, Mr. Rodrigg? Oh no!”

“No, indeed.” Lady Paton’s head-shake might have damped the most arduous conjecture. “He went away, you know—very angrily, it seems, and most discourteously, for I did not even see him. He behaved very badly, Michael told me. Michael himself is gone; you knew that too? He just stopped to see me on his way to the station.”

“Mr. Perior—yes.” Mrs. Jedsley looked ruminative; even to her quickly jumping mind that long leap of inference did not suggest itself except in one connection.

Poor Mr. Perior! Had Camelia been giving the mitten right and left? Buffeting back into hopelessness each suitor who advanced, encouraged by another’s failure? Had Mr. Perior really been foolish enough to run his head into that trap?

“Now that the comedy is over, the chief confidant packs up—he quite filled that rÔle, didn’t he?” she said. “And our fine jingling lady, Mrs. Fox-Darriel? Has she, too, folded her tents and stolen away?—not silently, I’ll be bound. She had staked something on the match.”

“She is gone. She spoke unkindly to me of Camelia. I do not like her. I could say nothing, it was so——”

“So neatly done. She implied, merely; you would have accepted inferences by recognizing them. I can hear her!”

“She felt for me. Camelia had gone too far—it didn’t look well; a girl must not overstep certain limits; one could make too much of a reputation for audacity; Camelia’s charm had been to be audacious, without seeming so. And the sad affair of Mr. Rodrigg—Camelia should not have stooped, and to no purpose; people turned on one so horridly. Poor Sir Arthur would lose his bill as well as his sweetheart, now that Camelia had meddled so disastrously. Oh! she was most unkind.” Lady Paton evidently remembered the unkindness—her voice was a curious echo.

Mrs. Jedsley ruminated energetically all the way back to the village, as, her skirts raised in either hand, she marched with heavy-booted splashes through the mud. Near the village she overtook Mary, bending as she walked, an umbrella uncomfortably wedged under one arm, several parcels encumbering her.

“My dear, why walk in this weather?” Mrs. Jedsley herself walked in all weathers, but for Mary, with a pleasant equine background, the necessity was not obvious; she joined her with the ejaculation.

“Oh! I like walking, Mrs. Jedsley,” said Mary. “Aunt Angelica always tells me to have the pony-cart, but it seems hardly worth while for this little distance.”

“A good mile. Where are you bound for?”

“I want to see Mrs. Brown; Kitty was rather troublesome in Sunday-school last Sunday.”

“And how nicely you manage that class. It is a credit to you. Camelia now laughs at it.” Mary said nothing to this, and Mrs. Jedsley added, “Not that she has much heart for laughing at anything just now from what I hear. That is the very encouraging feature of the whole case. It is ridiculous to speak of her as setting feathers in her cap with a light heart. She really feels this sad affair.”

“Yes,” said Mary, looking ahead with a rather rigid settling of her features.

“One might perhaps say affairs,” Mrs. Jedsley added, for she could not keep those restless conjectures to herself; out they galloped. “It has been a general dÉbÂcle. Mr. Rodrigg gone in a fury—breathing flame; Sir Arthur flung from his triumph—and, poor Mr. Perior. Now I really did not expect it of Mr. Perior; I thought he knew her so well—yet, for eyes that can see it’s very evident, isn’t it?”

Mary looked down, making no reply.

“Evidently she has a charm the most metallic male heart can’t withstand; a case of molten iron with Mr. Perior—in that condition I can imagine him irresistible to some women. But such a reasonable man; well-seasoned, and her friend for years. Oh! it’s a great pity that he let her melt him; no one knows now what shape his despair will cool to?”

Mary, her head bent persistently downward, stared at the muddy road.

“That she was very fond of him there is no denying,” Mrs. Jedsley pursued, “but I should have seen that as the most hopeless part of the matter. A girl like Camelia doesn’t marry the middle-aged mentor of her youth. But fond of him she is. I have watched her. Her eyes were always sliding round to him. He made a standard to her; she might jibe at it, but she liked to see it standing there—and to hang a wreath on it now and then. Upon my word, Mary!” and Mrs. Jedsley, stopping short in a mud-puddle, turned triumphant eyes on Mary’s impassive face, “I shouldn’t be surprised if that were the real matter with her. She is really fond of him; his tumble hurts her more than the other’s. She misses her sign-post pointing steadily at friendship. She is sorry to lose her friend.”

Mary after a little pause said, “Yes.”

“Yes! You think so too!” cried Mrs. Jedsley delightedly. “You have opportunities, of course——”

“Oh no! No, indeed, Mrs. Jedsley—I only think, only imagine——”

“You have thought and imagined what I have. And that we are right I don’t doubt. The double catastrophe accounts very fully for her low spirits—and I really respect her for them, though that the catastrophe should have occurred makes it only just that she should suffer. But Mr. Perior was foolish. Ah yes! in her defence I must say that!”

Mary was saying nothing, standing mutely at the parting of the roads until her companion should have done. She was well prepared for Mrs. Jedsley’s unconscious darts.

Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s parting look and parting words still rankled in her heavy heart; the look, one of pity; the words: “She has refused the other too! And him she would have liked to keep dangling! She enjoys an interminable sense of drama when he is by; her life is bereft without it. But the man was mad to think that she would take him,” and the look had added that the man was a fool not to see and be contented with the minor fact Mary would have been so willing to supply. Mary had felt withered; her nerves scorched to apathy, since that look.

“You must come in and have tea with me, my dear,” said Mrs. Jedsley, “it will put strength into you for your talk with Mrs. Brown. Come and have a cup with me—and you know my hot scones; we will talk this over. Your aunt doesn’t suspect it, poor dear!”

“No, Mrs. Jedsley, thanks—I can’t come, and no, aunt does not know—must not know; it would make her feel very unhappy! she is so fond of Mr. Perior; she doesn’t suspect it,” Mary spoke with sudden insistence—“and then, it may be pure imagination on my part,” she added, flushing before Mrs. Jedsley’s smiling and complacent head-shake. “It would be unfair to them—would it not?—to Camelia I mean—and——”

“And Mr. Perior; quite true, my dear. We must be as quiet as mice about it. Unfair, as you say. We must not hang out his heart for the daws to peck at. Poor man! You won’t come in to tea?”

“Thanks, no. I must be home early.” Mary hurried away. She bit her lips hard, staring before her at the wet browns and grays of the lane, dingy, drab, like her life; narrow, dull, chill with on-coming winter, and leading—the lane led to the churchyard. Mary’s thoughts followed it to that destination, and suddenly the hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and hard sobs shook her as she walked.