"Know! Everyone in town knows by now. My daughter running after a common soldier in the streets—a beggar—worse than a beggar—and kissing him like a—like a——"
Mrs. Thrift interrupted with mournful hastiness. "We must send her away. East. For a little visit. That would be best, for a few months."
At that Isaac Thrift laughed a rather terrible laugh. "Away! That would give them a fine chance to talk. Away indeed, madam! A few months, h'm? Ha!"
Mrs. Thrift threw out her palms as though warding off a blow. "Isaac! You don't mean they'd think—Isaac!"
Charlotte regarded them both with wide, uncomprehending eyes.
Her mother looked at her. Charlotte raised her own tear-drenched face that was so mutely miserable, so stricken, so dumbly questioning. Marred as it was, and grief-ravaged, Mrs. Thrift seemed still to find there something that relieved her. She said more gently, perhaps, than in any previous questioning:
"Why did you do it, Charlotte?"
"I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it."
Isaac Thrift snorted impatiently. Hetty Thrift compressed her lips a little and sighed. "Yes, but why did you do it, Charlotte? Why? You have been brought up so carefully. How could you do it?"
Now, the answer that lay ready in Charlotte's mind was one that could have explained everything. And yet it would have explained nothing; at least nothing to Hetty and Isaac Thrift. The natural reply on Charlotte's tongue was simply, "Because I love him." But the Thrifts did not speak of love. It was not a ladylike word. There were certain words which delicacy forbade. "Love" was one of them. From the manner in which they shunned it—shrank from the very mention of it—you might almost have thought it an obscenity.