After this all Mrs. Grey's letters to Miss Cavendish were written by a hand buttoned up in a tight glove, and with a hard steel pen, and continued to be stiff and unrecognizable.
And in all Emma's answers there was surprise and regret expressed for the long-continued lameness of Mary Grey's right hand.
One day Emma communicated a piece of neighborhood gossip that quite startled Mary Grey.
"You will be sorry to hear," she wrote, "that our excellent pastor, Dr. Goodwin, has had a paralytic stroke that disables him from preaching. The Rev. Mr. Lyle, formerly of Richmond, is filling the pulpit."
Mary Grey was very much interested in this piece of news, that her own old admirer should be even temporarily located so near Blue Cliffs, with the possibility of his being permanently settled there.
She had not heard from this devoted clerical lover once since she had left Mount Ascension. She did not understand his sudden withdrawal, and she had often, with much mental disquietude, associated his unexpected estrangement with her own unceremonious dismissal from her situation as drawing-mistress at that academy.
It is true that when they corresponded, in answer to his ardent love-letters, she would write only such kind and friendly notes that could never have compromised her in any way, even if they should have been read in open court or published in a Sunday newspaper.
And he had sometimes complained of the formal friendliness of these letters from one for whom he had truly professed the most devoted love, and who had also promised to be his wife--if ever she was anybody's.
But Mrs. Grey had artfully soothed his wounded affection without departing from her prudential system of writing only such letters as she would not fear to have fall in the hands of any living creature, until suddenly he ceased to write at all.
At the time of this defection she had been too much taken up with her purpose of winning the affection of the wealthy and distinguished statesman, Governor Cavendish, to pay much attention to the fact of the Rev. Mr. Lyle's falling away.
But in these later and calmer days at Blue Cliffs and at Charlottesville she had pondered much on the circumstance in connection with her simultaneous dismissal from her situation at Mount Ascension; and she thought all but too likely that Mr. Lyle had, like Mrs. St. John, learned something of her past life so much to her disadvantage as to induce him to abandon her.