Dulcibel stooped to comply, and afterwards took herself softly off, to enter into a troubled consultation with Nessie as to the probable cause of Joan’s “odd state.”
Joan lay meantime in a kind of crushed silence and languor, not stirring, not even thinking, only conscious of a black cloud over her life. She dared not let herself look the matter fully in the face. She was capable at first of nothing but endurance. For nearly an hour this pause of body and mind lasted, and then the vigor of her young strong nature began to assert itself. Joan slowly sat up, pushed back the hair from her brow, and sighed deeply.
“I shall have to tell mother,” were the first words that passed her lips. “She and Nessie must know—and Leo.” Joan was surprised at the sudden shrinking which assailed her there. “Leo—must Leo be told? Yes, of course; he is one of us. Why not? I can’t deceive any of them. The sooner I speak, the better. And father—oh, dear, dear father!” sobbed Joan—“it would never make any difference to him. Perhaps to others, not to him. But doesn’t he know already?”
Joan stood up and went to the bow-window, where her little writing-table stood. How often she had sat there, looking out on the fair expanse of lawn and flower-beds, trees, and shrubs, and distant meadows! Everything was just the same as always, only Joan’s own condition seemed so changed.
“Cairns farm! Cairns farm, my real mother’s home! And that old man my grandfather!” Joan shivered. “I don’t believe it—I can’t believe it. And Marian— Oh, I never, never could think of her as mother! It can’t be true—it can’t be true!” moaned the poor girl, in a low-voiced anguish. “Father would never turn me away—never, never! But what will mother say? I don’t know how to tell her! And Leo? If only I could hide my head, and never see anybody again, except my own dear, dear father!”
Joan leant her forehead against the windowpane, sighing heavily again.
“If mother should turn against me—mother thinks so much of family and position. And father—now he is weak—if she should persuade him! No, that would be too terrible! I could not leave father. But when mother knows who really is my mother and my grandfather—that old farmer and her nurse—and my other grandfather too proud to have to do with me! I don’t care about him; but this—this; it does seem so strange. Father is not proud; but still—the Cairns living so near; and if mother—oh, if I could be sure they would not mind, I could bear anything—but if mother and Nessie turn against me—and Leo—”
Grief and distress were rising, to an over-powering pitch. Joan left the window, and walked to and fro with hasty, uncertain steps.
“How can I bear it? What can I do? If there were any help for me! If there were any help!”
As the words left Joan’s lips, her eyes fell upon the Bible which always lay on her writing-table, a well bound, handsome volume, one of George Rutherford’s numberless gifts to his adopted child.