Penfold's wandering wits, and for the
moment held them fast. For Victoria, whose secret object was to discover,
if she could, any facts about Lydia's doings and feelings during the
interval of separation, that might throw light upon her Harry's
predicament, made it cunningly appear that she had come expressly to tell
her neighbours of the startling event which was now agitating Duddon, as
it would soon be agitating the countryside.
Mrs. Penfold--steeped in long years of three-decker fiction--sat
entranced. The cast-off and ill-treated wife returning to the scene of
her misery--with the heiress!--grown up--and beautiful: she saw it all;
she threw it all into the moulds dear to the sentimentalist. Victoria
demurred to the adjective "beautiful"; suggesting "pretty--when we have
fed her!" But Mrs. Penfold, with soft, shining eyes, already beheld the
mother and child weeping at the knees of the Ogre, the softening of the
Ogre's heart, the opening of the grim Tower to its rightful heiress, the
happy ending, the marriage gown in the distance.
"For suppose!"--she turned gayly to her daughters for sympathy--"suppose
she were to marry Mr. Faversham! And then Mr. Melrose can have a stroke,
and everything will come right!"
Lydia and Susy smiled dutifully. Victoria sat silent. Her silence checked
Mrs. Penfold's flow, and brought her back, bewildered to realities; to
the sad remembrance of Lydia's astonishing and inscrutable behaviour.
Whereupon her manner and conversation became so dishevelled, in her
effort to propitiate Lady Tatham without betraying either herself or
Lydia, that the situation grew quickly unbearable.
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