“Men are prejudiced and unpracticable on some points,” she soliloquized, “and though I am quite satisfied that the poor girl is married, he may choose to doubt it, or think we had better get out of her.  Her illness was entirely occasioned by the shock, so there really is no necessity to explain my little accidental discovery.”

But the plot was thickening, for that morning there arrived a letter from Mrs. Leighton written in great perturbation, to the effect that she had heard some very uncomfortable reports about Miss Leigh.  Her information was derived from the captain’s wife at Liverpool, to whom she had written on Bluebell’s obtaining a situation, supposing that, as they had shown her so much kindness, they would feel interested in the fact.  But she had received in return a most extraordinary letter from Mrs. Davidson, stating that Miss Leigh had eloped from their house, leaving only a letter containing an improbable story about going to be married, without even mentioning to whom.  Her husband, to be sure, had his suspicions as to the lover, but the name had escaped her memory, and Captain Davidson was at sea.

Now Mrs. Markham began to feel her innocent complicity becoming a little embarrassing.  It was rather awkward keeping a suspected person about the children.  Her husband would be in fits if he knew it, but, however imprudent of Bluebell to elope, she still saw no reason to doubt the marriage.  Had she not the wedding-ring in proof of it?

So as she worked and planted, unavoidably decimating a worm here and turning up an ants nest there, she conned it all over.

“The child must really tell me her secrets, or I can do nothing.  I will get her out for a drive; sitting alone in one room, as that demented old Chivers prescribes, is the worst thing for a nervous complaint.”

So the next fine morning she ordered the car, and, going to the governess’s room, asked her, in a matter-of-course manner, to put on her hat and come out.

Bluebell had just received a visit from the local practitioner, who had reiterated his assurances that “we wanted tone, and had better adhere to the iron mixture; that we must not exert ourselves, and must be sure to lie down a great deal,” etc.; but she assented to Mrs. Markham’s proposal with the same indifference with which she had listened to Esculapius.

They drove on for some distance through a straggling village, with its ivied church guarded by sentinel cypresses, children were playing about with hands full of cowslips, and lilac bushes blossomed within cottage palings.  A little beyond they turned into Sir Thomas Farquhar’s park, where young rooks were cawing, unwitting of their predestined pastried tomb.  On entering a long, shady avenue, Mrs. Markham pulled the horse up to a walk, and said quietly,—­“When were you married, Miss Leigh?”

Perhaps this question had not been unexpected since the little episode of the ring, for, with equal calmness, Bluebell replied,—­“The last week in November, at Liverpool.”