Long and eager is the discussion that follows on the girl's disappearance.
The two Misses Blake, side by side, argue (with what they erroneously term dispassionate calmness) the case just laid before them.
"I don't know what is to be done," says Miss Priscilla, at length: "all I do know is that, for her sake, consent will be impossible."
"And what is to be said to him to-morrow? He looks so earnest, so—full of her. What is to be said to him?"
"So his uncle looked at her mother," says Miss Priscilla, with a terrible bitterness; "and what came of that? Is this young man to steal from us our best and dearest—as he did? Be firm, Penelope. For her sake crush this attachment before the fickleness that is in his blood asserts itself to break her heart."
"I fear it will be broken either way," says Miss Penelope, who has a secret hankering after all true lovers.
"At least her self-respect will be spared, and for that she will thank us later on. She must give him up!"
"Priscilla," says Miss Penelope, in a low tone, "supposing she refuses to do it?"
"When I have fully explained the matter to her, she will withdraw her refusal," says Miss Priscilla, very grandly, but her expression is not up to her tone in anyway. It is, indeed, depressed and uncertain.