Miss Brindle came to the library on the 17th of September at 3:00 in the afternoon alone and shut the door behind her. Verity had been expecting her for a fortnight. It is a thing you learn in service. The way you learn whether a conversation is coming and you cannot say how you know.
"Don't get up. How many have you done?"
"231."
"You said 150."
"I have had longer than I expected."
"Yes," she said. "You have." She walked the length of the table, looking at the ranks under their felts, at the bath, at the frame with a book in it, half-sewn. At the end, she stopped and put one gloved finger on the great atlas, which lay open at its rebacked spine, drying under weights.
"I saw him carry a tub across the yard at 6:00 in the morning," she said.
Verity said nothing.
"I was awake. I am always awake in a strange house. I stood at that window on the stairs for a quarter of an hour. I watched the Duke of Glenn Moore carry a tub of hot bran across his own yard in his shirt sleeves. He stood in a stable for 40 minutes while an old horse ate it." She turned round. "He did not look up once at the house. Not once in 40 minutes. Do you understand what I am telling you?"
"I think you had better tell me plainly, ma'am."
"Very well. I am not a fool, and I will not be made into one by good manners." Miss Brindle's voice was perfectly level, and her color had gone. "I know what I am buying. I have known it since April. My father is discharging £38,000 and settling 60 more. In exchange, I shall be Duchess of Glenn Moore. I shall be received, and my daughters will be received, and no one in Warrington will ever again say the iron master's girl in a room where I can hear it. That is the bargain. I made it with my eyes open, and I do not complain of it."
"Then I do not see what I have to do with it."
"You have this to do with it," said Miss Brindle. "I could bear the bargain. I have been perfectly prepared since I was 22 to be married by a man who is grateful to me. What I cannot bear is to be married by a man who is somewhere else."
The clock in the passage struck the quarter.
"There is a thing my father does," she said, "and I have watched him do it 40 times. When a difficulty is a man, he buys the man. It is not cruel. It is only quick." She opened her reticule and took out a folded paper and laid it on the table on the felt next to the book. "250 guineas. My own money from my own aunt and my father knows nothing of it. It is enough for your brother's articles with 50 over and I understand that the premium is 200."
Verity looked at the paper. She did not touch it. "How do you know about my brother?"
"Because I asked the housekeeper what you wanted and she would not tell me. And then I asked the woman who does the stairs, and she did." Miss Brindle's mouth moved a little. "You see what I am? I am my father's daughter. Take it and go before the 29th, and write to nobody here for 2 years."
There was a long silence in the library. Somewhere outside a boy was calling the cows in the low ground.
"No," said Verity.
"Do not be a fool. He will not marry you. He cannot. He will be a duke on 1,200 a year with a mortgage he cannot pay. You will be a binder's daughter in a house with the plate sold. And in 10 years he will look at you across a cold room and think what he might have done with £60,000."
"That may all be true." Verity he said "I am not refusing you because I expect anything. I am refusing you because that paper is a wage for going away and I have been paid for what I do since I was 15 and I will not begin now being paid for what I am." She put her hands behind her back. "But you may have the rest of what you came for ma'am and you need not buy it. I am leaving Oldtown on the 24th. I gave Mrs. Mossup my notice on Monday."
Miss Brindle stood very still. "Why?"
"Because he is engaged to be married," said Verity. "And because I am not able to be in this house at Michaelmas."
Miss Brindle was handsome, clever, pleasantly cruel, 6 and 20. She had been looked over by three men in 5 years, like a mare at a fair. She put her hand out and took the paper back off the table, and her fingers were not steady. "You are a great deal harder than I am," she said.
"No, ma'am. I have only had more practice at going."