Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/39

Rh Rose Armiger had a melancholy headshake. "Don't ask me about her—I dislike her too much, perhaps, to be strictly fair. For me, however, I daresay, it didn't matter so much that she was narrow and hard: I wasn't an easy victim—I could take care of myself, I could fight. But Julia bowed her head and suffered. Never was a marriage more of a rescue."

Mrs. Beever took this in with unsuspended criticism. "And yet Mrs. Grantham travelled all the way down from town the other day simply to make her a visit of a couple of hours."

"That wasn't a kindness," the girl returned; "it was an injury, and I believe—certainly Julia believes—that it was a calculated one. Mrs. Grantham knew perfectly the effect she would have, and she triumphantly had it. She came, she said, at the particular crisis, to 'make peace.' Why couldn't she let the poor dear alone? She only stirred up the wretched past and reopened old wounds."

For answer to this Mrs. Beever remarked with some irrelevancy: "She abused you a good deal, I think."