Lydia began to sob. She attempted no exculpation—expressed no penitence—just lay and sobbed, like a child. She is hardly more, even yet—only nineteen, I believe. So we sat—papa as silent as we, resting on his stick, with his eyes fixed on the cottage floor, till Lydia turned to me with a sort of fright. .
“What would Miss Johnston say if she knew?”
I wondered, indeed, what my sister would say.
And here, Max—you will hardly credit it, nobody would, if it were an incident in a book—something occurred which, even now, seems hardly possible—as if I must have dreamt it all.
Through the open cottage door a lady walked right in, looked at us all, including the child, who stopped in his munching of bread to stare at her with wide-open blue eyes—Francis's eyes; and that lady was my sister Penelope.
She walked in and walked out again, before we had our wits about us sufficiently to speak to her, and when I rose and ran after her, she had slipped away somehow, so that I could not find her. How she came to take this notion into her head, after being for weeks shut up indoors;—whether she discovered that the Cartwrights had returned, and came here in anger, or else, prompted by some restless instinct, to have another look at Francis's child—none of us can guess; nor have we ever dared to enquire.
When we got home, she was lying in her usual place on the sofa, as if she wanted us not to notice that she had been out at all. Still, by papa's desire, I spoke to her frankly—told her the circumstances of our visit to the two women—the destitution in which we found them; and how they should be got away from the village as soon as possible.
She made no answer whatever, but lay absorbed, as it were—hardly moving, except an occasional nervous twitch, all afternoon and evening, until I called her in to prayers, which were shorter than usual—papa being very tired. He only read the collect, and repeated the Lord's Prayer, in which, among the voices that followed his, I distinguished, with surprise, Penelope's. It had a steadiness and sweetness such as I never heard before. And when—the servants being gone—she went up to papa, and kissed him, the change in her manner was something almost startling.
“Father, when shall you want me in the district, again?” said she.
“My dear girl!”