"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.