She turned the letter over in her hands. Then she put it back in its box, and locked the box, and locked the drawer, and rang for her candles.
IV.
By breakfast the next morning, the whole house knew.
Hester could tell from the way Nancy, the nursery maid, would not meet her eye over the porridge, and the way the second footman, carrying coals up the back stairs, flattened himself against the wall to let her pass as though she were already someone else. By eleven Mrs. Pell had sent up to ask whether Miss Bennett might spare her a quarter of an hour in the housekeeper's room, and Hester went down knowing very well what she would hear.
Mrs. Pell was a broad, grey, soft-spoken woman who had been at Ashcombe since before the late Duchess came as a bride, and who kept the keys of every room in the house on a ring at her waist, save one. She poured Hester a cup of tea without asking and pushed the sugar across.
"I shan't keep you, my dear," she said. "Only I thought you ought to hear it from me before you hear it from worse. Nancy was on the landing yesterday with the clean linen. She heard the little one."
"I supposed she had."
"It went round the servants' hall by supper. And then James was in the passage outside Her Grace's sitting room with the coals, and he heard a word or two more than he ought. I've spoken to him. I've spoken to all of them." Mrs. Pell stirred her tea. "But you know how it is. You can stop a tongue. You can't stop an ear."
"What are they saying?"
The housekeeper looked at her with great kindness. "What they always say, Miss Bennett. That there's no smoke without fire. The better sort among them are sorry for you. The rest are laying wagers." She set down her spoon. "I've known His Grace since he was in short coats. I never saw him look at the late Duchess the way he's been looking at that nursery door these six weeks, and I loved her ladyship, so you'll understand it costs me something to say so. But I've seen what happens to girls in your place, too. I'd not see it happen to you."
"No," said Hester. "Nor would I."
She went back upstairs with the letter to Mrs. Ormsby still unfinished in her apron pocket, and took Rose out into the gardens, because the day was bright and cold and because she could not bear the nursery walls.
The rose garden lay below the south terrace, within old brick walls the colour of a fox's back. It had been the late Duchess's particular province. Hester knew that from Mrs. Pell, and from the fact that Rose had been named for it, and from the way the gardeners still pruned it with a sort of nervous devotion, as though she might come down the steps at any moment and inspect their work. In October there was little left: a few blowsy late blooms, pink and cream, and a great many scarlet hips.