His letters, for instance,
to our Council Committee about the allotments we are trying to get out of
the old villain have been devilish clever, and devilish impudent! Melrose
couldn't have written them. And now this business of the girl!--and the
fortune!--sickening!"
"He is a queer chap," said Undershaw thoughtfully. "I've been as mad with
him as anybody--but somehow--don't know. Suppose we wait a bit. Melrose's
life is a bad one."
But Barton refused to wait, and went off storming.
The facts, he vowed, were more than enough.
The weeks passed on. Duddon knew no longer what Green Cottage was
doing. Victoria, at any rate, was ignorant, and forbore to ask--by
word of mouth; though her thoughts were one long interrogation on the
subject of Lydia, both as to the present and the past. Was she still in
correspondence with Faversham, as Victoria now understood from Tatham she
had been all the summer? Was she still defending him? Perhaps engaged to
him? For a fair-minded and sensible woman, Victoria fell into strange
bogs of prejudice and injustice in the course of these ponderings.
In her drives and walks at this time, Victoria generally avoided the
neighbourhood of the cottage. But one afternoon at the very end of
October, she overtook--walking--a slight, muffled figure in the Whitebeck
road, and recognized Susy Penfold. A constrained greeting passed between
them, and Lady Tatham learnt that Lydia was away--had been away, indeed,
since the day following her last interview with Harry.
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