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Updated: June 25, 2025
"I'm going. But Mrs. Bremner said " Mrs. Coombe's hand came down with stinging force upon the child's ear. "Will you obey me or will you not?" Jane retired wailing and her mother sank back into her veranda chair, red spots burning through the powder on her cheeks. Esther sat very still for a moment, and then, without looking at the other, she asked in a low voice: "What did she mean?"
"As sure as you saw her speak to the boy's mother the day before, just so sure she whisked him back to Scotland the next morning," said Andrews. "She's one of the kind that's particular. Lord Coombe's the reason. She does not want her boy to see or speak to him, if it can be helped. She won't have it and when she found out " "Is Lord Coombe as bad as they say?" put in Anne with bated breath.
But she knew nothing of paid service and a preliminary talk of Coombe's with Mademoiselle Valle had warned her against allowing any suspicion that this "earning a living" had been too obviously ameliorated. "Her life is unusual. She herself is unusual in a most dignified and beautiful way.
There was that instant written upon Coombe's face so far at least as his old friend was concerned his response to the significance of this. It was the elemental thing which that which moved him required; it was what the generations and centuries of the house of Coombe required a primitive creature unashamed and with no cowardice or weak vanity lurking in its being.
Coombe's ridicule, Aunt Amy's need had been no fancy. And there was another thing; he was coming to the house. Her mother would see him and presto! her prejudice against doctors would vanish he would cure the headaches, and everything would be happy again. The doctor, watching keenly, thought that she must have been troubled greatly to show such evident relief. "One thing more," he said.
Andrews thought proper to further justify herself by repeating, "She didn't think there could be any objection." "There couldn't," Mrs. Gareth-Lawless remarked. "I do know the boy. He is a relation of Lord Coombe's." "Indeed, ma'am," with colourless civility, "Anne said he was a big handsome child."
The amazed doctor was understood to murmur something about "private means." "That's good. You'd starve if you hadn't. Coombe's a terrible healthy place and poor Doc. Simmonds didn't pay a call a week. I just felt like some one ought to warn you. I despise folks who hold back from telling things because they ain't quite pleasant. Know the worst, I always say; it's better in the end.
Andrews was the Norman-towered church on the edge of the park enclosing Coombe Keep. "I came to you because I also remembered that," was Coombe's reply. Their meeting was a very quiet one. But every incident of life was quiet in the Vicarage. Only low sounds were ever heard, only almost soundless movements made.
They had been separated, you see, and she had been brave and waited. One can imagine " The click of the garden gate interrupted her. "Here's your mother," said Aunt Amy, in a flurried tone. "Don't let her " "Is that the mail, Esther?" Mrs. Coombe's high voice held a fretful intonation. Aunt Amy seized the letter and hid it in her dress. "She shan't see it," she whispered childishly.
Esther and her step-mother set out upon their homeward walk in silence. The older woman's face was drawn and bitter, Esther's thoughtful and sad. Though there seemed no reason for haste, Mrs. Coombe's steps grew constantly quicker until she was hurrying breathlessly. More than once the girl glanced at her anxiously as if about to speak, yet hesitating.
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