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Updated: May 3, 2025
Hester was the bright, particular star in that house, as Stephen Barron had now found out. Alack! alack! The Rector's face resumed for a moment the expression of painful or brooding perplexity it had worn during his conversation of the afternoon with young Barron, on the subject of Hester Fox-Wilton. Another light in a window and a sound of shouting and singing.
"What story? I wish you wouldn't allow Tibbald to gossip as you do, Sarah!" said Lady Fox-Wilton angrily. But a close observer might have seen that her bright colour precipitately left her. "Why, what harm was it?" cried Sarah, wondering. "He told me, because it seems Mrs. Sabin used to be a servant of ours long ago. Do you remember her, mamma?"
It was actually maintained that the leader round whom such feelings had gathered had been, since his ordination, the betrayer of a young and innocent girl, belonging to a well-known family; that although it had been in his power for twenty years to marry the lady he had wronged, he had never attempted to do so, but had rather, during all that time, actively connived at the fraud by which his illegitimate child had passed as the daughter of Sir Ralph Fox-Wilton; while over the whole period he had kept up relations and who knew of what character? with the child's mother, an inhabitant of the very village where he himself was Rector.
But whoever wrote it was acquainted with the Fox-Wilton family, with their habits and his own, as well as with the terms of Sir Ralph's will, so far as mainly he believed through the careless talk of the elder Fox-Wilton girls it had become a source of gossip in the village. The writer of it could not be far away. Was it a man or a woman? Meynell examined the handwriting carefully.
The presence of Lady Fox-Wilton, in particular, was needed to show these contrasts at their sharpest. As Hester still raced about the lawn, with the dog, that lady came round the corner of the house, with a shawl over her head, and beckoned to the girl at play. Hester carelessly looked round. "What do you want, mamma!" "Come here. I want to speak to you."
She thought of the gossip now rushing like a mud-laden stream through every Upcote or Markborough drawing-room. All the persons whom she had snubbed or flouted were concerning themselves maliciously with her and her affairs were pitying "poor Hester Fox-Wilton." Her heart seemed to dry and harden within her.
And then afterward you find yourself let in for living years and years with a bad conscience hating the cuckoo-child, too, more and more as it grows up. Yes! I am quite sorry for Sir Ralph!" "By the way!" Flaxman looked up "Do you know I am sure that I saw Miss Fox-Wilton with Philip Meryon in Hewlett's spinney this morning.
Meynell remembered that the stopping of it had caused some friction between Ralph and his wife. Lady Fox-Wilton had wished it continued. But Ralph had obstinately refused to pay any more. Nothing had been heard of her, apparently, for a long while. But she had still a son and grand-children living in Upcote village. Meynell opened the gate leading into the Forked Pond enclosure.
"Let him find another cottage all the same," said Barron briefly. "I shall go round, if I do get back from Markborough, and have a talk with him this evening." There was silence for a little. Theresa was evidently sad. "Perhaps Lady Fox-Wilton would find him something," she said anxiously at last. "His mother was her maid long ago.
Hester Fox-Wilton was sitting on a log with her straw hat on her lap. In pushing along the overgrown stream, the coils of her hair had been disarranged and its combs loosened. The hair was of a warm brown shade, and it made a cloud about her headland face, from which her eyes and smile shone out triumphantly.
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