A quarter of a mile went by. "You're a fool, lass."
"I know it, Mr. Buick."
"So long as you know it," said Ned Buick, and did not say another word until he put her box down at the carrier's yard in Winderby.
Miss Sidonia Brindle went to the Daer House on the 26th of September at 10:00 in the morning and stayed 1 hour and 10 minutes. Nobody knows the whole of what was said. Lady Perpetua Carbury, who lived a long while yet, and told a great many stories, never told that one, except for two sentences, which she gave to Verity herself the following spring, in the hot room with the fire.
"She came in," said Lady Perpetual. "She stood in the middle of that carpet with her hands put together. And she said, 'I am told you are the only person in this county who says what she means, and I have 3 days.' And what did you say? I told her to sit down, and I gave her a glass of madeira, and she drank it, which I like in a young woman." The old lady turned her rings. "And then she asked me a question. She said if she went through with it, would I receive her? Not the county. Me."
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her the truth, which is that I would have received her with pleasure and been very sorry for her every Sunday of her life." Lady Perpetual looked into the fire. "She was not a stupid girl, and she was not a wicked one. She was a girl who had been for sale since she was 19 and had been brought up to think that was ordinary and had found out that summer that it was not ordinary at all. There is no cruelty in the world like being taught your own value by somebody who is kind to you."
The notice went into the morning post on the 2nd of October. It said that the marriage arranged between his grace, the Duke of Glenn Moore, and Miss Brindle would not take place, and that the engagement had been ended by the lady. That was Lady Perpetual's doing, and Mr. Brindle's, and they were both of them right about it. A woman who ends an engagement is a woman with judgment. A woman who is thrown over 6 weeks before Michaelmas is a joke in three counties for a year.
Mr. Ephraim Brindle came to Oldtown once more on the 1st of October and was with the Duke in the library for 2 hours. Nobody was in the room. What is known is that he came out into the hall and put his hat on. Then he said loudly enough for the two footmen to hear it: "You have used my girl better than I did, and I shall not forgive you for it in a hurry." He went out to his carriage. He never entered the house again. Four years later, there was a bad winter, and the lime trade stopped dead for 14 weeks. He sent £500 to Oldtown on a note of hand at 4%. That is the sort of thing men of that kind do instead of writing letters.
Michaelmas day in Winderby was a market day. Verity had a back room over Mr. Atwood's shop in Bridge Street 12 ft by 8 with a bench under the window and her father's press standing in the corner, bought back out of Warrington for £12 10s with the last of her wages. She had four books in hand for the vicar of Kirkstead and a set of sessions papers to sew for Mr. Tunnliffe, and she had been at the bench since 7.
She heard the horse in the yard below, and did not look up. Half the county was in Winderby that day. Then she heard Mr. Atwood on the stair saying, "Yes, your grace. At the top and to your left, your grace." In a voice she had never heard him use.
She put the folder down. He came in and had to stoop under the door, and then there was very little room for either of them. He had ridden in the rain. He stood there with his hat in his hand and the water running off the brim onto Mr. Atwood's floor.
"You should have written," she said, because her heart was going and she needed a moment.
"I did write four times," he looked at the bench. "I did not send them. They were not any good."
"Your grace."
"The search is done," he said. "There is no sale, no release, no fine. It was let for 80 years, and everybody forgot. And my grandfather told his son he had sold it because he was ashamed of the rent he took for it. Ellisby will lend 39,000 at 5% over 21 on the quarry and the wharf. It is signed. I am glad Hill Street is sold. So are the pictures in the long gallery except two and the carriage horses and the London plate. I shall live at about 1,200 a year until the kilns come in and SK is gone and I am doing the rents myself with a boy from the home farm to hold the book."
He stopped. "Miss Brindle is at Bath. She wrote to me on Tuesday. It was a kind letter and I did not deserve it and I have kept it."
The rain went across the window.
"Why have you come?" said Verity.
"To ask you to marry me," said the Duke of Glenmore. "And to tell you the terms, because you are the only person I know who is not insulted by terms."
"Then tell me the terms."
He put his hat down on the end of the bench on a sheet of clean board, and she noticed that he was careful about it, and she thought she might not be able to bear that.
"You would be marrying a man with a mortgage of £39,000 and no ready money." He said "there will be nothing for 10 years but work and I am not good company and I wake at 4 in the morning three nights in the week and there is nothing to be done about it. That is what I have. Your brother's articles are 200 guineas and I have them and they are his whether you have me or not. I sent the premium to Mr. Atwood's care on Friday. That is not part of it. I will not buy anything from you."
Verity stood in the middle of her 12 ft by 8 and found that she was holding the edge of the bench.
"You have not said the other thing," she said.