For several minutes there was a complete silence in the room, none of them made the slightest movement. At last Catherine turned abruptly and exclaimed with passionate vehemence, "Are you both dumb? Can you not say anything?"
Sister Eliza first recovered her composure. "Sister Catherine," she said, "I do not understand you. You are not yourself this evening. You are ill and excited. We will wait until to-morrow morning, then you will explain this matter to us. I have sufficient faith in you to know that you have acted for the best."
"And I," exclaimed Susan with a contemptuous bitterness in her voice, "believe that this is the beginning of the end. I foresee that the Society has received its death-blow. This weakness of yours will leak out, Sister Catherine. Oh, yes! I understand what you have done. You must know what will happen now. When the Sisters discover that the Chief has so little care of their safety, that she refuses to remove a great danger, because forsooth to do so stands in the way of her private affection, do you think they will believe in her any more, trust her again? Why, they will never know from what side to expect danger next. They will desert the Cause in panic, seeing that their very general has betrayed them."
Catherine paid no heed to Susan's angry words, but rose slowly from the chair, and said in an absent weary way, "I wish to be alone. I have told you everything. If you desire to know more come to-morrow—but leave me alone now, I pray you—good-night!"
"This is the shortest meeting we have ever had," said Susan with a sneer; "but if the business of the Society is to be transacted in this way, it looks as if we are likely to have a last shorter meeting still some day—one in front of the gallows. Treachery—"
"Silence, Sister Susan!" interrupted the boarding-house keeper, sternly. "Let us go. Sister Catherine, I will come here to-morrow morning. Good-night! you want rest; sleep will do you good."
"Sleep!" echoed Catherine in a despairing voice. Sister Eliza looked over her shoulder anxiously at her Chief, as she went out of the room with Susan Riley, and the woman was once more left alone with the thoughts that were killing her.
Sister Eliza and Susan Riley walked together down the Edgware Road. For some time neither spoke. Each in her different way was dismayed at the prospect before the Secret Society, and was pondering over the situation.
Susan felt absolutely ill with rage and disappointment. Her scheme of vengeance against the girl she hated had been frustrated, at any rate for the time. But this was not all. She clearly saw that the Chief's line of conduct with regard to Mary, boded great peril to the Society. She felt that Catherine King would never recover her self-esteem and consciousness of power. She knew the woman's character too well. And she was well aware what an unstable institution that Society was, how soon it would be scattered when the master-mind failed to hold its sway. Susan's passion for intrigue and conspiracy had made her an enthusiast a selfish one it is true, of the Cause. It had now become a necessity of her life, and she trembled as she thought how near the collapse of it threatened to be.
She spoke in a low voice to her companion as they walked along: "Eliza! the Chief will never recover from the results of this piece of folly. I know her: she is lost, and after her the Cause."