Sophie Geldheraus.”
As she concluded, Prudence broke down utterly, and, throwing herself on her bed, gave way to a bitter outburst of weeping. There was nothing for it now but to let things take their course, to accept all the annoyance, deception, seclusion, and suspicion involved in so anomalous, so unprecedented a situation. She saw nothing before her but a life spent in avoiding acquaintances, in evading enquiry—the life of a fugitive, dogged by a blameless past.
“It is horrible, horrible!” she wailed. “If it were anything else, I think I could bear it, but this is so incredible, so unheard of. How am I to manage about our business matters? Will Mr. Carson believe me if I tell him the truth? Will he ever credit that the infant I show him is Augusta?” (Mr. Carson was the solicitor who managed the affairs of the Misses Semaphore.) “What about signing deeds and so forth? Then, if I pretend she has died, he will want to come to the funeral, or see the death certificate, or take out probate, or something of that kind that will involve enquiry. Oh! what, what am I to do?”
At last, exhausted by weeping, Miss Prudence lay still, and stared with sodden eyes at the flies dancing on the ceiling. The one agreeable object of her reflections was that at least she had got Augusta safely away, and placed her in hands that were both kind and safe.
A longing to see her sister came over her. Though Augusta was dumb and helpless, it would at least be some consolation to talk to her, to pour out her woes.
To a woman of the stamp of Prudence, the necessity for secretiveness, for independent or uncounselled action, is terrible. She wanted someone to advise her, someone to lean on, and little consolation as she could expect from communing with Augusta, it would at least be a relief to say all that was in her mind.
Accordingly she rose, wrote a few lines to “good Mrs. Brown,” announcing her intention of calling at Plummer’s Cottages the following afternoon, and having donned a thick veil to conceal her distorted features, proceeded to post the note.
The walk did her good. A fresh wind was blowing, that cooled the hot cheeks of the troubled lady. In the air was something of rest that soothed her, and it was in a more equable frame of mind that she returned home.
At the door of 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, she became conscious that something unusual was agitating the inmates. A loud, angry voice reached her, muffled by intervening doors—a voice she seemed to recognise; and when, in answer to her ring, Müller opened the door, his face was flushed and his manner agitated.
“Oh, blease,” he gasped, when he saw her, “I am glat that you, matam, hafe come. Here it is a voman asking you to see, and ven I say you are not zu Haus, she schimpf and cry, and vill not go avay.”