"I couldn't go away," Mary continued slowly, "but they went--after two years! I fought so hard to deaden myself that I might not feel, that I seem to have been half dead ever since. It's eight years since they left. I don't love him now. I don't think of him for months at a time; but that was my love affair, Teresa. There was never anyone else. There never will be now, and life goes on just the same year after year. It's wicked, I suppose, but I wonder sometimes why women like me were ever born." "Mary, you are very useful. You work so hard--you are always working." "Little things!" said Mary, sighing. "Little things! Things with my hands. But a woman is not _all_ hands." She hitched the blankets once more, and lay back on the pillow. "You'd better go to bed. It's getting late." "Good night, Mary; good old Mary! You shall come and stay with me in my house, and I'll give you a real good time." Teresa turned away, eager to make her escape. She did not kiss her sister, for kisses were not frequent in the Mallison family, and the sudden unlocking of Mary's sealed lips left an effect of strangeness, as if some stranger had taken her place. It was disturbing and disagreeable to realise that Mary could _feel_! She opened the door softly and was stepping over the threshold when Mary's voice called in an urgent note. "More confidences!" sighed Teresa to herself, and stood still to listen. "Did you remember to turn out the hall light?" asked Mary. CHAPTER TEN. NEWS IN CHUMLEY. The news of Teresa Mallison's engagement provided Chumley with an excitement which was shared equally by every section of the community. Tradesmen discussed it with their assistants, message boys overheard, and took it home in the dinner hour, as an important item of news which mother would be able to bestow on other members of the Coal Club and Mothers' Meeting. "That fair girl of Mallison's, she hooked him up at Bagnor! Peignton they call him. Fair chap as drives a dog-cart." Domestic servants discussed the engagement with the maids next door, and opined that the old Major would be glad to get rid of one of them. Wherever a couple of matrons stood together on the pavement of the High Street, or a cluster of girls stood holding bicycles in the roadway itself, it would have been safe to bet that the subject of discussion was that of the latest engagement. "Have you heard the news?" "What news?" "Teresa Mallison. You haven't heard? Oh, I _am glad_ to be the one to tell you. Engaged!" The speaker's voice would swell to a note of triumph, she would fall back a step the better to contemplate the surprise, the excitement, on the face of the listener. "Engaged! Teresa? _Not_--" "Yes! Yes!" Here the informant would execute a little prance of excitement. "It is," Captain Peignton. _Isn't_ it exciting? The most interesting engagement for years. Mrs Mallison is beaming.