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The fact is, of course, that he's been here for twenty years, and the Squire couldn't get on for a day without him, or thinks he couldn't. So that his position is, as you may say, strongly entrenched, and counter-attacks are useless. 'The married daughters Mrs. Gaddesden, who, I think, is an Honourable, and Mrs. Strang are coming to-morrow to see their brother before he goes into camp.
Strang, no doubt, and Mrs. Gaddesden. She did not take much to either lady. Mrs. Strang seemed to her full of good intentions, but without practical ability to fit them. For Mrs. Gaddesden's type she had an instinctive contempt, the contempt of the clever woman of small means who has had to earn her own living, and to watch in silence the poses and pretences of rich women playing at philanthropy.
Gaddesden's knitting to rights at least three times, and held the wool for that lady to wind till her arm ached. Then Mrs. Gaddesden retired to bed; the Squire, who with only occasional mutterings and mumblings had been deep in Elizabeth's copy of the Times, which she had at last ventured to produce in public, went off to the library, and Elizabeth and Pamela were left in the hall alone.
'And my married sisters? Elizabeth hesitated again. 'Well, Mrs. Gaddesden is rather afraid of being starved. Mrs. Strang, on the other hand, thinks we're wickedly extravagant! Her neighbour was so much amused that conversation flowed on easily thenceforward; and Desmond opposite whispered to Pamela: 'Just look at Broomie! She's actually making Aubrey talk.
Gaddesden had replied that certainly Elizabeth had told her the whole story, so far as it concerned Mr. Anderson. She pointed to the letters beside her. "But you cannot suppose," had been her further indignant remark, "that Elizabeth would ever dream of marrying him!" "That, my dear old friend, is for her mother to find out," Delaine had replied, not without a touch of venom.
But on the morning before she went she had worked superhumanly to put things in order, whether for her typist, or Captain Dell, or Pamela, who must at least take over the housekeeping. The relations between her and Miss Bremerton that morning had struck Mrs. Gaddesden as odd certainly not cordial. But there was nothing to complain of in Pamela's conduct.
That was the amazing thing which had by now begun to set all tongues wagging. Sir Henry Chicksands, meeting Mrs. Gaddesden at the station, had poured himself out to her. 'That extraordinary young woman your father has got hold of, is simply transforming the whole place. The farmers on the whole like her very much. But if they don't like her, they're afraid of her!
How could she think of herself when Philip was ill suffering threatened? And how would he bear the news of Anderson's hastened departure? As soon as she reached home, she was told by the sleepy butler that Mrs. Gaddesden was in the drawing-room, and that Mr. Anderson was still upstairs with Philip.
Gaddesden murmured a broken report of the few words of conversation which rose now, like a blank wall, between all the past, and this present; and Elizabeth listened, the diamonds in her hair and the folds of her satin dress glistening among the shadows of the half-lit room, the slow tears on her cheeks. At last a step descended. Anderson entered the room.
Yet he was more absorbed than ever in the details of Greek research and the labour of his catalogue. Only, of an evening, he read the Times for a couple of hours, generally in complete silence, while Elizabeth and Mrs. Gaddesden talked and knitted. An extraordinary softness an extraordinary compassion was steadily invading Elizabeth's mind in regard to him.
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