I drew the curtains, and asked Amelia to stay until Hatty was asleep. I knew she would not talk much, and Hatty would not care to tell her things as she would me. Going down-stairs, my Uncle Charles greeted me, laughing, with,—
“Here she comes, the good Queen Bess! Cary, you deserve a gold medal.”
Grandmamma bade me come to her, and tell her all I knew. She exclaimed several times, and took ever so many pinches of snuff, till she had to call on my Aunt Dorothea to refill the box. At the end of it she called me a good child, and the Jesuits traitors and scoundrels, to which my Uncle Charles added some rather stronger language.
Charlotte seems to have known nothing of what was going on; or, I should rather say, to have noticed nothing. She is such a careless girl in every way that I am scarce surprised. Amelia did notice things, but she had a mistaken notion of what they meant. She fancied that Hatty was in love with Mr Crossland, and that she, not knowing of his engagement in marriage with Miss Marianne Newton, was very jealous of what she thought his double-dealing. Until after I spoke to her, she had no notion that there might be any sort of Popish treachery. Something which happened soon after that, helped to turn her mind in that direction. But Hatty says she knew next to nothing.
“But,” says my Uncle Charles, “how could a Jesuit priest marry anybody? It seems to be all in a muddle.”
That I cannot answer.
Hatty is better to-day, after a quiet night’s rest. She still looks woefully ill, and Grandmamma will not let her speak yet. Now that Grandmamma is roused about it, she is very kind to Hatty and me also. I do hope, now, that things have done happening! The poor Prince is a fugitive somewhere in Scotland, and everybody says, “the rebellion is quashed.” They did not call it a rebellion until he turned back from Derby. My Uncle Bracewell has writ to my Uncle Charles again with news, and has asked him to see Amelia and Charlotte sent off homeward. Hatty will tarry here till we can return together.
At last our poor Hatty has told her story: and a sad, sad story it is. It seems that Mr Crossland was pretending to make court to her at first, and she believed in him, and loved him. At that time, she says, she would not have brooked a word against him; and as to believing him to be the wretch he has turned out, she would as soon have thought the sun created darkness. There was no show of Popery at all in the family. They went to church like other people, and talked just like others. From a word dropped by Miss Theresa Newton, Hatty began to think that Mr Crossland’s heart was not so undividedly her own as she had hoped; and she presently discovered that he was not to be trusted on that point. They had a quarrel, and he professed penitence, and promised to give up Miss Marianne; and for a while Hatty thought all was right again. Then, little by little, Mrs Crossland (whose right name seems to be Mother Mary Benedicta of the Annunciation—what queer names they do use, to be sure!)—well, Mrs Crossland began to tell Hatty all kinds of strange stories about the saints, and miracles, and so forth, which she said she had heard from the Irish peasantry. At first she told them as things to laugh at; then she began to wonder if there might be some truth in one or two of them; there were strange things in this world! And so she went on from little to little, always drawing back and keeping silence for a while if she found that she was going too fast for Hatty to follow.