happened to go into the kitchen to get something I wanted. There were two kitchens at the vicarage, a small one in which the cooking was done and a large one, built I suppose for a time when country clergymen had large families and gave grand dinners to the surrounding gentry, where Mary-Ann sat and sewed when her day’s work was over. We had cold supper at eight so that after tea she had little to do. It was getting on for seven and the day was drawing in. It was Emily’s evening out and I expected to find Mary-Ann alone, but as I went along the passage I heard voices and the sound of laughter. I supposed Mary-Ann had someone in to see her. The lamp was lit, but it had a thick green shade and the kitchen was almost in darkness. I saw a teapot and cups on the table. Mary-Ann was having a late cup of tea with her friend. The conversation stopped as I opened the door, then I heard a voice.
“Good-evening.”
With a start I saw that Mary-Ann’s friend was Mrs. Driffield. Mary-Ann laughed a little at my surprise.
“Rosie Gann dropped in to have a cup of tea with me,” she said.
“We’ve been having a talk about old times.”
Mary-Ann was a little shy at my finding her thus, but not half so shy as I. Mrs. Driffield gave me that childlike, mischievous smile of hers; she was perfectly at her ease. For some reason I noticed her dress. I suppose because I had never seen her so grand before. It was of pale blue cloth, very tight at the waist, with high sleeves and a long skirt with a flounce at the bottom. She wore a large black straw hat with a great quantity of roses and leaves and bows on it. It was evidently the hat she had worn in church on Sunday.
“I thought if I went on waiting till Mary-Ann came to see me I’d have to wait till doomsday, so I thought the best thing I could do was to come and see her myself.”
Mary-Ann grinned self-consciously, but did not look displeased. I asked for whatever it was I wanted and as quickly as I could left them. I went out into the garden and wandered about aimlessly. I walked down to the road and looked over the gate. The night had fallen. Presently I saw a man strolling along. I paid no attention to him, but he passed backward and forward and it looked as though he were waiting for someone. At first I thought it might be Ted Driffield and I was on the point of going out when he stopped and lit a pipe; I saw it was Lord George. I wondered what he was doing there and at the same moment it struck me that he was waiting for Mrs. Driffield. My heart began to beat fast, and though I was hidden by the darkness I withdrew into the shade of the bushes. I waited a few minutes longer, then I saw the side door open and Mrs. Driffield let out by Mary-Ann. I heard her footsteps on the gravel. She came to the gate and opened it. It opened with a little click. At the sound Lord George stepped across the road and before she could come out slipped in. He took her in his arms and gave her a great hug. She gave a little laugh.
“Take care of my hat,” she whispered.
I was not more than three feet away from them and I was terrified lest they should notice me. I was so ashamed for them. I was trembling with agitation. For a minute he held her in his arms.
“What about the garden?” he said, still in a whisper.
“No, there’s that boy. Let’s go in the fields.”
They went out by the gate, he with his arm round her waist, and were lost in the night. Now I felt my heart pounding against my chest so that I could hardly breathe. I was so astonished at what I had seen that I could not think sensibly. I would have given anything to be able to tell someone, but it was a secret and I must keep it. I was thrilled with the importance it gave me. I walked slowly up to the house and let myself in by the side door. Mary- Ann, hearing it open, called me.
“Is that you, Master Willie?”
“Yes.”
I looked in the kitchen. Mary-Ann was putting the supper on a tray to take it into the dining room.
“I wouldn’t say anything to your uncle about Rosie Gann ’avin’ been here,” she said.
“Oh, no.”
“It was a surprisement to me. When I ’eared a knock at the side door and opened it and saw Rosie standing there, you could ’ave knocked me down with a feather. ‘Mary-Ann,’ she says, an’ before I knew what she was up to she was kissing me all over me face. I couldn’t but ask ’er in and when she was in I couldn’t but ask her to ’ave a nice cup of tea.”
Mary-Ann was anxious to excuse herself. After all she had said of Mrs. Driffield it must seem strange to me that I should find them sitting there together chatting away and laughing. I did not want to crow.
“She’s not so bad, is she?” I said.
Mary-Ann smiled. Notwithstanding her black decayed teeth there was in her smile something sweet and touching.
“I don’t ’ardly know what it is, but there’s somethin’ you can’t ’elp likin’ about her. She was ’ere the best part of an hour and I will say that for ’er, she never once give ’erself airs. And she told me with ’er own lips the material of that dress she ’ad on cost thirteen and eleven a yard and I believe it. She remembers everything, how I used to brush her ’air for her when she was a tiny tot and how I used to make her wash her little ’ands before tea. You see, sometimes her mother used to send ’er in to ’ave her tea with us. She was as pretty as a picture in them days.”
Mary-Ann looked back into the past and her funny crumpled face grew wistful.
“Oh, well,” she said after a pause, “I dare say she’s been no worse than plenty of others if the truth was only known. She ’ad more temptation than most, and I dare say a lot of them as blame her would ’ave been no better than what she was if they’d ’ad the opportunity.”
VIII
THE weather broke suddenly; it grew chilly and heavy rain fell. It put an end to our excursions. I was not sorry, for I did not know how I could look Mrs. Driffield in the face now that I had seen her meeting with George Kemp. I was not so much shocked as astonished. I could not understand how it was possible for her to like being kissed by an old man, and the fantastic notion passed through my mind, filled with the novels I had read, that somehow Lord George held her in his power and forced her by his knowledge of some fearful secret to submit to his loathsome
