"Then what _did_ you mean? Not better, evidently. What do you expect him to find out when he knows me better?"

"Nothing. There's nothing to find."

Teresa rose with an elaborate flutter of garments, and stood tall and straight by the bedside.

"I'd better go. It is evidently not the slightest use talking to you to-night. I think you have been very unsisterly and disagreeable. I wish I had never come in. I was so happy, and you have done nothing but throw cold water. Are you jealous, Mary, that you are so unkind?"

Mary gave her back look for look. A dull flush showed itself on her cheek-bones.

"Would it be such a wonderful thing if I were? I _am_ jealous; of course I am jealous. I have every reason to be jealous. You get everything, Teresa; and I get nothing. It has always been like that, and it always will be. You are strong, and I am weak; you are pretty, and I am plain; you are popular, and I am dull. You are masterful, and get your own way, and I am cowardly, and am beaten; but because one is dull, and cowardly, and plain, it doesn't follow that one can't feel--it doesn't follow that one can't _ache_! I have ached for this all my life, and it has come to you. No one ever cared for me, but I should have made a good wife. I should have loved him more than you will ever love. You have wasted so much love on yourself, but I had it all to give. I loved a man once, as you love Captain Peignton, but he never thought of me. He married a girl with a pretty face, and lived close to us for nearly two years. Mother used to invite them here, and send me with messages to the house. I could not look out of the window without seeing them together, walking down the street, sitting in the garden.

My bedroom window overlooked their summer-house. I used to see him come in and kiss her."

Teresa shuddered.

"I should have gone mad! Poor old Mary! But why did you stand it? I should have gone away, and done something."

"What?" Mary asked, and Teresa was silent. Mary had a way of asking questions which were impossible to answer. What _could_ Mary do? She was one of the vast army of middle-cla.s.s daughters brought up to do nothing, and thereby as hopelessly imprisoned as any slave of old. She possessed no natural gifts nor accomplishments, she lacked the training which would have ensured excellence in any one department of domestic work, she was devoid of a personality which would make her mere companionship of marketable value. What could Mary do, and who would care to engage Mary to do it? Teresa was silent, finding no reply. She stood hesitating by the bedside, sympathetic but impatient. She was sorry; of course she was sorry, but to-night she wanted to be glad. It would have been better to have gone straight to her room.

"I couldn't go away," Mary continued slowly, "but they went--after two years! I fought so hard to deaden myself that I might not feel, that I seem to have been half dead ever since. It's eight years since they left. I don't love him now. I don't think of him for months at a time; but that was my love affair, Teresa. There was never anyone else.

There never will be now, and life goes on just the same year after year.

It's wicked, I suppose, but I wonder sometimes why women like me were ever born."

"Mary, you are very useful. You work so hard--you are always working."

"Little things!" said Mary, sighing. "Little things! Things with my hands. But a woman is not _all_ hands." She hitched the blankets once more, and lay back on the pillow. "You'd better go to bed. It's getting late."

"Good night, Mary; good old Mary! You shall come and stay with me in my house, and I'll give you a real good time."

Teresa turned away, eager to make her escape. She did not kiss her sister, for kisses were not frequent in the Mallison family, and the sudden unlocking of Mary's sealed lips left an effect of strangeness, as if some stranger had taken her place. It was disturbing and disagreeable to realise that Mary could _feel_! She opened the door softly and was stepping over the threshold when Mary's voice called in an urgent note. "More confidences!" sighed Teresa to herself, and stood still to listen.

"Did you remember to turn out the hall light?" asked Mary.

CHAPTER TEN.

NEWS IN CHUMLEY.

The news of Teresa Mallison's engagement provided Chumley with an excitement which was shared equally by every section of the community.

Tradesmen discussed it with their a.s.sistants, message boys overheard, and took it home in the dinner hour, as an important item of news which mother would be able to bestow on other members of the Coal Club and Mothers' Meeting. "That fair girl of Mallison's, she hooked him up at Bagnor! Peignton they call him. Fair chap as drives a dog-cart."

Domestic servants discussed the engagement with the maids next door, and opined that the old Major would be glad to get rid of one of them.

Wherever a couple of matrons stood together on the pavement of the High Street, or a cl.u.s.ter of girls stood holding bicycles in the roadway itself, it would have been safe to bet that the subject of discussion was that of the latest engagement.

"Have you heard the news?"

"What news?"

"Teresa Mallison. You haven't heard? Oh, I _am glad_ to be the one to tell you. Engaged!" The speaker's voice would swell to a note of triumph, she would fall back a step the better to contemplate the surprise, the excitement, on the face of the listener.

"Engaged! Teresa? _Not_--"

"Yes! Yes!" Here the informant would execute a little prance of excitement. "It is," Captain Peignton. _Isn't_ it exciting? The most interesting engagement for years. Mrs Mallison is beaming.

The listener would enthuse in her turn, sometimes wholeheartedly, sometimes with an undercurrent of sadness or regret. Mothers of aging daughters knew a vicarious pang, the daughters themselves smiled brilliantly and ached within, but the general note was praise of Teresa, pride in Teresa, an a.s.sumption that Teresa had accomplished a laudable work, and had raised herself a head and shoulders above her fellows.

Such is the general opinion in English country towns, where the educated females of the population exceed the male by a round ten to one. As for Dane himself, he was the pa.s.sive member in the transaction. He had been "caught." Teresa had "caught" him. It was said in no spirit of unkindness, but it was said all the same. Every voice said it, every smile, every nod of the head and knowing arch of the brow. Clever Teresa. The best match in the town!

Grizel, like most other matrons, heard the news outside the grocer's shop in the High Street. The night before Martin had sighed over the grocer's bill, and that sigh had sent his wife speeding out of the house by eleven o'clock the next morning, fired with determination to become a model housekeeper forthwith, and deliver her own orders in person.

Interviewed before starting, Cook acknowledged that Robson's _was_ high, but had no further explanation to offer than that "it _did_ run up!"

The young man called every morning, and there was always "Something,"

but Chumley matrons had repeatedly warned Grizel that that young man should _not_ call. It was death and destruction to let cooks order at the door. Orders should be given in the shop, and delivered later in the van. Grizel had hesitated, and advanced a counter-plea.

"But the van-man is quite old, and Orders is such an attractive youth.

It's hard on poor Cook!" But now Martin had frowned, and the lines had showed in his forehead, and she could have found it in her heart to imprison Cook in a nunnery for life.

Mr Robson, senior, hurried forward to attend in person to a customer of distinction, and took advantage of the occasion to direct her attention to a number of new and delectable goods, positively the latest things on the market. Fruits preserved whole, and so cleverly as to be hardly distinguishable from fresh; gla.s.s shapes of rare and costly edibles, all ready for the table; sauces, condiments, appetising novelties in biscuits. Grizel displayed the liveliest interest, tasted, with relish, whenever a taste was practicable, and ordered half-dozens of each novelty in turn. Mr Robson pointed out that there was a reduction upon taking half a dozen, and Grizel had set her heart on reduction. The size of the bill gave her a disagreeable shock, however, and she left the shop feeling decidedly crestfallen, to fall into the arms of Mrs Gardiner and Mrs Evans, who were standing just outside.

The sight of Mrs Beverley emerging from a provision store, like any ordinary prosaic housekeeper, was surprising enough to put the subject of the latest engagement into the background while the good ladies greeted her, and stealthily examined the details of her toilette.

"Good morning, Mrs Beverley. It is a surprise to see _you_ here! No need to ask how you are.--You look the picture of health."

"I'm not really. I'm bowed low with care. My domestic troubles are like my wedding presents, numerous and costly. The worst of all is the grocer. I never knew that a grocer's shop was so alluring! I thought it was all teas and pickles, and dull things for cleaning that one can't eat, but it's a fiery furnace of temptation. I've been in ten minutes and I've spent pounds... And I came myself because I wanted to save!"

The matrons' smile bore a touch of pathos. They themselves had suffered from grocers' bills for many years, and knew the inevitableness thereof.

Every woman who is at the head of a household must shoulder the burden of the grocer's bill, and bear it bravely, for it is hers for life.

a.s.siduous, unceasing care may at times relieve the pressure, but there can be no escape; the smallest slackening of care, and the burden presses once again, weighing her to the earth.

On almost any other subject the listeners would have been ready to converse with the interesting bride, but when it came to a choice between grocer's bills and a new engagement, the engagement won at a canter.

"We were just discussing an exciting piece of news!" Mrs Gardiner said, smiling. "You have heard already, I suppose. Everybody is talking about it!"

Grizel's face brightened instantly into the most agreeable animation.

"No! Tell me... _What_ is it? Somebody run away with somebody else's wife?"

"My dear!" Mrs Evans frowned disapproval. "This is not London. I am thankful to say we don't do such things. We were speaking of an engagement in which we are much interested. You know the girl, of course. Teresa Mallison. We are so pleased to know of her happiness."

"So am I. I love girls to be happy. I'd like them all to be engaged and married to-morrow to husbands nearly as nice as mine. And she has such a ripping complexion... Who is the happy man?"

This was the thrilling point. Mrs Gardiner beamed with importance.

"Captain Peignton!"

Grizel's chin dropped; she stood stock-still, staring with big eyes.

Why and wherefore she had no idea, but the news was subtly unwelcome and disturbing. She had imagined that the _fiance_ would be the curate, the doctor, the manager of the branch bank--never for one moment had it entered her mind to think of Dane Peignton filling the role. Her mind chronicled a picture of him as she had seen him last, bidding good night to Ca.s.sandra Raynor at the conclusion of the dinner party two nights before. She had studied him with critical eyes, acknowledging his attractiveness, and--like others before her--wondering wherein the attraction lay, but concerning one thing she had known no uncertainty, she had known that he had been bored to leave so early! There had been nothing of the eager lover about him, as he turned with Teresa to the door. Grizel felt the flatness of her own voice as she asked: "When?

How long? I didn't know..."

"Only on Tuesday. After the dinner party at the Court, I believe. He brought her home. Of course you were there, and saw them together.

Didn't you suspect?"