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Lydia Wells continued with the same enthusiasm. ‘And there are other correspondences! He was travelling alone, as you were, and he arrived this morning, as you did. Perhaps he made a friend by some accident of circumstances—quite as you did, when you met me!’
A
‘Edward is his name. Edward Sullivan. Oh, how I wish I had brought him back with me—how I wish I had known! Are you not aching to make his acquaintance?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ she whispered.
‘What an extraordinary thing,’ said Lydia Wells, gazing at her. ‘It is most extraordinary. I wonder what would happen, were you ever to meet.’
SILVER
In which Crosbie Wells makes a request; Lydia Wells is imprudent; and A
The mortification that A
A
Believing herself uniformly criticised, A
‘You’d do well in a camp, my girl,’ he said. ‘A breath of fresh air, is what you are. Unspoiled. Nothing worse than a woman with a ready answer. Nothing worse than a woman who’s forgotten how to blush.’
Lydia Wells—a woman with a great many ready answers, and who very rarely blushed—had been only infrequently seen at number 35, Cumberland-street since her husband’s unexpected return. She left the house in the late morning, and often did not return until the dusk, when the gambling parlour opened for the night. Wells, in her absence, kept mostly to the first-floor boudoir, where the decanters on the sideboard were refilled daily. Drink softened him. A
Wells, it transpired, had no desire to return to the fields at Dunstan. A
Whether Mrs. Wells comprehended A
The operations of the House of Many Wishes had been revealed to A
Mrs. Wells did not invite her to attend the evening parties immediately. From her bedroom window A
‘She’s raising your value,’ Wells explained. ‘The longer they have to wait, the more you’ll fetch, when it comes time to go to market.’
‘Oh, Crosbie,’ snapped Mrs. Wells. ‘Nobody’s going to market. Don’t be absurd.’
‘Farming,’ said Wells. ‘There’s an enterprise. I could be a farmer—and you could be my farmer wife.’ To A
‘He’s only trying to frighten you,’ said Mrs. Wells. ‘Don’t listen to him.’
‘I’m not frightened,’ said A
‘She’s not frightened,’ said Wells.
‘There’s nothing to be frightened about,’ said Mrs. Wells.
In fact A