'What is it, my man?' said the chaplain; but as he listened his face changed. He gave one amazed and significant glance at Mrs. Fane, then biting his lips and trying to seem unmoved, he wrote and signed the paper; Mrs. Fane signed it; and then, at her request, poor bewildered Smith feebly scrawled his name. He did it because he was told: he did not seem to care much one way or another for anything more.
'Joe can tell you all about it,' he said. 'Joe Carter—he has took his discharge. I don't know where he is—Liverpool may be.'
John Morgan could hardly contain his excitement, and his umbrella whirled like a mill, as he left the workhouse. 'You are a good woman; you have done a good morning's work,' said the chaplain, as he came away with Mrs. Fane; 'say nothing more at present. We must find out this Joe who was with him. Whatever we do let us be silent, and keep this from that wretched, scheming girl.'
Afterwards, it turned out, that it would have been better far if John Morgan had spoken openly at the time; but his terror of Rhoda's schemes was so great that he felt that if she only knew all, she would lay hands on Joe, carry off Smith himself, make him unsay all he had said. 'There is no knowing what that woman may not do,' said Morgan. 'She wrote to me; I have not answered the letter. Do you know that the marriage is actually fixed? I am very glad that you have got Dolly away from that adder's nest.'
'So am I,' said Mrs. Fane, beaming for an instant; she had long ago taken Dolly to her heart with a confused feeling of some maternal fibre strung, of something more tender and more enduring than the mere friendship between a girl and an older woman.
I cannot help it if most of those who knew my Dolly persisted in spoiling her. She wanted every bit of kindness and sunshine that came in her way. And yet she was free from the strain that had wrenched her poor little life, she need no longer doubt her own feelings, nor blind herself to that which she would so gladly escape.
The morbid fight was over, and the world was at peace. It was at peace, but unutterably sad, empty, meaningless. When people complain that their lives are dull and have no meaning, it is that they themselves have no meaning. Dolly felt as if she had been in the thick of the fight, and come away wounded. 'I may as well be here as anywhere else,' she had said that moonlight evening when poor Jonah had entreated her in vain to come away with him.
Dolly would not go back to Henley; she had her own reasons for keeping away. But next morning, when an opportune letter came from Mrs. Fane, Dolly, who had lain awake all night, went to her mother, who had slept very comfortably, and said, 'Mamma, if you can spare me, I think I will go over to England with the Squire and Jonah for a little time, until the marriage is over.' Mrs. Palmer was delighted. 'To Yorkshire? Yes, dearest, the very best thing you can do.'
'Not to Henley, mamma,' Dolly said; 'I should like, please, to go to Mrs. Fane's, if you do not object.'
'What a child you are,' cried Mrs. Palmer; 'you prefer poking yourself away in that horrid, dismal hospital, when poor Jonah is on his knees to you to go back to Henley with him.'