"A good riddance, I call it--and we all know the rest of that saying," Mrs. Cooper remarked to an audience of Hordle and Mary Fisher, reinforced by the Napoleonic Patch and his wife--who happened to have looked in from the stables after supper--some freedom of speech being permissible, thanks to the under-servants' relegation to the kitchen.
"I never could see she was any class myself. But the airs and graces she'd give herself! You'll never persuade me she wasn't sweet on the master. That was at the back of all her dressings up, and flouncings and fidgetings. The impidence of it!--You may well say so, Mrs. Patch. But the conceit of some people passes understanding. To be Lady Verity, if you please, that was what she was after. To my dying day I shall believe it. Don't tell me!"
Mary's announcement of the event was couched in sober terms, shorn of such fine flowers of suggestion and comment. Yet it breathed an unmistakable satisfaction, which, to Damaris' contrition, found instant echo in her own heart. She ought, she knew, to feel distressed at poor Theresa's vanishing--only she didn't and couldn't. As an inherent consequence of the afore-chronicled bridge-crossing, Theresa was more than ever out of the picture. To listen to her chatterings, to evade her questionings would, under existing circumstances, amount to a daily trial from which the young girl felt thankful to escape. For Damaris entertained a conviction the circumstances in question would call for fortitude and resource of an order unknown, alike in their sternness and their liberality of idea, to Theresa's narrowly High Anglican and academic standards of thought and conduct. She therefore ascertained from her informant that Miss Verity had been as actively instrumental in the vanishing--had, to be explicit, taken "Miss Bilson, and all her luggage (such a collection!) except two disgraceful old tin boxes which were to be forwarded by the carrier, away with her in her own Marychurch fly."--And at this Damaris left the business willingly enough, secure that if tender-hearted Aunt Felicia was party to the removal, it would very surely be effected with due regard to appearances and as slight damage to "feelings" as could well be.