Now Mrs. Furnival knew to a furlong the distance from Noningsby to Orley Farm, and knew also that the station at Hamworth was only twenty-five minutes from that at Alston. She gave no immediate answer, but threw up her head and shook her nostrils, as though she were preparing for war; and then Miss Martha Biggs knew that there was somebody special at Alston. Between such old friends why should not the name be mentioned?
On the following day the two ladies dined at six, and then waited tea patiently till ten. Had the thirst of a desert been raging within that drawing-room, and had tea been within immediate call, those ladies would have died ere they would have asked for it before his return. He had said he would be home to tea, and they would have waited for him, had it been till four o'clock in the morning! Let the female married victim ever make the most of such positive wrongs as Providence may vouchsafe to her. Had Mrs. Furnival ordered tea on this evening before her husband's return, she would haye been a woman blind to the advantages of her own position. At ten the wheels of Mr. Furnival's cab were heard, and the faces of both the ladies prepared themselves for the encounter.
'Well, Kitty, how are you?' said Mr. Furnival, entering the room with his arms prepared for a premeditated embrace. 'What, Miss Biggs with you? I did not know. How do you do, Miss Biggs?' and Mr. Furnival extended his hand to the lady. They both looked at him, and they could tell from the brightness of his eye and from the colour of his nose that he had been dining at his club, and that the bin with the precious cork had been visited on his behalf.
'Yes, my dear; it's rather lonely being here in this big room all by oneself so long; so I asked Martha Biggs to come over to me. I suppose there's no harm in that.'
'Oh, if I'm in the way,' began Miss Biggs, 'or if Mr. Furnival is going to stay at home for long——'
'You are not in the way, and I am not going to stay at home for long,' said Mr. Furnival, speaking with a voice that was perhaps a little thick,—only a very little thick. No wife on good terms with her husband would have deigned to notice, even in her own mind, an amount of thickness of voice which was so very inconsiderable. But Mrs. Furnival at the present moment did notice it.
'Oh, I did not know,' said Miss Biggs.
'You know now,' said Mr. Furnival, whose ear at once appreciated the hostility of tone which had been assumed.
'You need not be rude to my friend after she has been waiting tea for you till near eleven o'clock,' said Mrs. Furnival. 'It is nothing to me, but you should remember that she is not used to it.'
'I wasn't rude to your friend, and who asked you to wait tea till near eleven o'clock? It is only just ten now, if that signifies.'
