‘I saw you one morning, ma’am,’ she said. ‘But you didn’t see me. It was when you were crossing the hill in sight of the Lodge. You looked at it, and sighed. ’Tis the lot of widows to sigh, ma’am, is it not?’
‘Widows—yes, I suppose; but what do you mean?’
Mrs. Peach lowered her voice. ‘I can’t say more, ma’am, with proper respect. But there seems to be no question of the poor Baron’s death; and though these foreign princes can take (as my poor husband used to tell me) what they call left-handed wives, and leave them behind when they go abroad, widowhood is widowhood, left-handed or right. And really, to be the left-handed wife of a foreign baron is nobler than to be married all round to a common man. You’ll excuse my freedom, ma’am; but being a widow myself, I have pitied you from my heart; so young as you are, and having to keep it a secret, and (excusing me) having no money out of his vast riches because ’tis swallowed up by Baroness Number One.’
Now Margery did not understand a word more of this than the bare fact that Mrs. Peach suspected her to be the Baron’s undowered widow, and such was the milkmaid’s nature that she did not deny the widow’s impeachment. The latter continued—
‘But ah, ma’am, all your troubles are straight backward in your memory—while I have troubles before as well as grief behind.’
‘What may they be, Mrs. Peach?’ inquired Margery with an air of the Baroness.
The other dropped her voice to revelation tones: ‘I have been forgetful enough of my first man to lose my heart to a second!’
‘You shouldn’t do that—it is wrong. You should control your feelings.’
‘By going to your dead husband’s grave, and things of that sort.’
‘Do you go to your dead husband’s grave?’
‘Ah—too true! Well, I’ve tried everything to cure myself—read the words against it, gone to the Table the first Sunday of every month, and all sorts. But, avast, my shipmate!—as my poor man used to say—there ’tis just the same. In short, I’ve made up my mind to encourage the new one. ’Tis flattering that I, a new-comer, should have been found out by a young man so soon.’
‘That’s his profession. He’s a partner-in-co., doing very well indeed.’
‘I don’t like to tell you his name, for, though ’tis night, that covers all shame-facedness, my face is as hot as a ’Talian iron, I declare! Do you just feel it.’