She flushed brightly. “I don’t know,—I only said I could—I didn’t say I would. Perhaps,—but I must not think of that now. I have to do what father tells me. But tell Jack how sorry I am to say good-bye to him—to you all—for a few days. Perhaps it won’t be longer. Oh, I do wish I could thank you rightly for all your love and kindness to me.”
“Come, Maimie,” shouted Churton.
I ran downstairs first, and protested earnestly against this hurried departure, but in vain. “The girl had taken her choice, and she should abide by it,” Churton replied shortly. “He had no doubt she had been put up to all this by others.” Then Maimie followed me into the hall, and there was another good-bye, and she was gone.
And I sat alone in the parlour, desolate at heart, till Cherry came home, and heard all. We shed many tears together.
It was harder work to tell my husband, and hardest of all to tell Jack. I think they marvelled at me for letting Maimie go, and I marvelled at myself,—yet what could I have done? The whole thing seemed to come like a flash of lightning, all power being taken out of my hands.
“She is sacrificing herself for us, dear child,” Robert said, when he and I talked the matter over. “I do not know whether we ought to allow it—if we have power to refuse. But Churton has a certain authority over her.”
Jack vanished for a long while that evening, and when present with the rest of us, he scarcely spoke a word.
[CHAPTER XXV.]
REFUSED AND ADMITTED.
A WEEK passed, and not a word came from Maimie. It was strange how the days seemed to drag with us, and how we watched the posts, and how we all talked of Maimie, wondering each hour of the day what she might be doing.