Place of Confinement by Anna Dean Read Free Book Online Page B

believe it was thirty years since she had been married here in this very church!’
    And more than one curious eye was cast in the direction of the rejected brother, walking alone through the crowd to the church door; head down, hands clasped behind him. But Dido found she could not quite feel compassion. There was about Mr George such an air of self-importance, such an ill-judged determination to impose his authority on all about him, that she could not but hold him responsible for his own discomfort.
    It was well that she had such very interesting thoughts to occupy her, for she soon found herself jostled aside to stand quite disregarded against one of the sandstone buttresses of the little church. Other members of the manor party were stopping frequently in their progress from chaise to pew, hailing friends and exchanging remarks upon the weather. But no one spoke to Dido. Once burdened with the paraphernalia of a companion, a woman becomes invisible to society. Over the last weeks she had been reminded many times of this horrible truth, but it had not yet lost its power to hurt her.
    However, invisibility provides an excellent situation from which to observe one’s fellow men. Dido bit her lip, clung to her burdens and watched. She watched Mrs Bailey attempting to avoid the attentions of a stout man in a canary-yellow waistcoat – watched her take refuge behind the scrubby yew bush which grew from the tomb of Mr Barnabas Finch (‘released from this vale of tears’). She watched Mr Lancelot Fenstanton – stepping away from his aunt now and talking with an air of benign patronage to a short pockmarked lad. The boy was twisting his cap constantly in his hands. He passed a note to Mr Fenstanton …
    ‘Miss Kent, may I speak with you?’ The voice was hissing so close to Dido’s ear that she felt its warmth on her cheek and took an instinctive step back.
    Martha Gibbs was beckoning urgently at her side and, as Dido stared in bewilderment, she stepped away behind the buttress. There seemed to be nothing to be done but to follow her.
    When they were both standing in long grass, pressed between the damp wall of the buttress and the slanting gravestone of Mrs Elizabeth Fosset (‘she wore her virtues like a crown of glory’), Miss Gibbs whispered, ‘She mustn’t see me talking to you.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Why, Mrs Bailey of course. She says I ain’t to say a word to you.’
    ‘That is rather inconvenient.’
    ‘I mean I must not say a word about Tish going and everything.’
    Dido merely raised her brows and waited for her companion to explain herself; but the girl stood in silence for a minute, as if struggling to find a beginning.
    Martha Gibbs’ awkwardness of manner was, unfortunately, not relieved by much beauty. Her face was long, her features heavy and, at present, her appearance was further marred by some remarkably ill-made curls which peeped from under her white straw bonnet – their ends frizzled from the hot poker having been applied too long.
    ‘Mrs Bailey is afraid you mean to interfere, you know,’ Martha began. ‘She thinks you mean to try to find Tish.’
    ‘And why should she be afraid of my … interference?’
    Martha glanced about her, and seeing that there was no one by – excepting, of course, Mrs Fosset – she whispered, ‘I don’t believe she wants Tish found.’
    ‘I beg your pardon? I do not quite understand—’
    But now she was begun, Martha seemed determined to have her say as quickly as possible. ‘I beg you, Miss Kent, to find her. I am so afraid for her, but I dare not do anything.’
    ‘But why should Mrs Bailey not wish to recover your friend? It is not much to her credit if a girl in her care disappears.’
    ‘It would make her and Mr B rich, though, wouldn’t it?’ said Martha bluntly. ‘Tish is always telling me Mrs B would get her fortune if she could. She says she is a wicked, jealous woman. And now she has been proved right. Tish has twenty thousand pounds, you