"What's it all about, Sarah?" he asked quietly, though his voice shook. "You never said nowt about Geordie coming to me."
In the pause that followed Sally drew away from her aunt's side, as if conscious that this moment was for the two of them alone. The silence waited for Sarah's answer, but she could not bring herself to speak. In the heat of her victory she had forgotten that Simon also would hear the lying tale. It was the only hitch in the splendid machinery of the lie, but it was enough in itself to bring the whole of it to the ground. Here was Simon in front of her, asking for the truth, and if a hundred Elizas had been present she could still have given him nothing but the truth. But indeed, at that moment, Eliza, and all that Eliza stood for, was swept away. In that hush and sudden confronting of souls Sarah and Simon were indeed alone.
"Geordie's never coming, is he, Sarah?" he asked anxiously. "Nay, you've dreamed it, my lass! And he's rich, d'ye say?--why, that settles it right out! Why, it was nobbut the other day he was writing home for brass!"
Still she did not speak, and quite suddenly he was wroth, vexed by her mask-like face and the sudden diminishing of his hope.
"Losh, woman!" he cried angrily. "You look half daft! Is yon lad of ours coming, or is he not? Is it truth you're telling me, or a pack o' lies?"
She stirred then, moved by the cheated sound in his angry voice. She gave a sigh. The fooling of Eliza had been utterly great and glorious, but it had come to an end. "It was just lies," she heard herself saying in a passionless tone, and then with a last twinge of regret, she sighed again.
Eliza's scream of "I knew it! I knew it!" merged in the chorus of exclamation from the group about the door. Will said nothing, fixing his sister-in-law with his kindly gaze, but Simon fell back muttering, and staring as if afraid. He wondered, looking at her unemotional face, whether the trouble about her eyes was beginning to touch her brain. She herself had said there was no knowing what blind weather might possibly do, no telling what a blind body's brain might someday suddenly breed....
He came back to the consciousness of Eliza's voice as a man from the dead hears the roar of life as he returns.
"I wonder you're not struck down where you stand, Sarah Thornthet! I wonder you're not liggin' dead on t'floor! But you'll be punished for it, right enough; you'll be paid for it, never fear! You'll see, summat'll happen to you afore so long,--I shouldn't wonder if it happened before morn! Like enough, the next news as we have o' Geordie'll be as he's dead or drowned.... I'll serve you a slap on t'lugs, Will, if you can't shape to let me be!"
It was Sally who saved the situation for the second time that day.