Mattie caught her by the wrist, so that Harriet should not escape her, or hide any sign of emotion which she might wish to conceal when all was known.
"You must come! There is no excuse. In a few hours Sidney Hinchford may be dead!"
Did the change upon that face tell all, or was it the natural result of such news as Mattie had hissed forth?
"Dead!—dead did you say?" asked Harriet, hastily.
"I did not tell your father a few nights ago that Sidney had left us—I reserved the news for you, and then missed you going home. He is in the hands of clever and scientific men, who hope to cure him of his blindness."
"Yes—go on."
"But there is a chance of failure, which Sidney risks, and thinks, perhaps, too lightly of. That failure will not subject him to his old estate, but drive him mad, or kill him."
"And you have let him risk his life—you!"
Away went the ecclesiastical slippers to the other end of the room; some wool got entangled in her hands, and she snapped it impatiently in two in preference to unwinding it; she turned to Mattie, full of reproach, fear, and indignation. Yes, the love was living still! Mattie might have known long ago that it had never died away, and that to keep it in subjection had been the task which Harriet had set herself, and failed in.
"They will murder him!—you have let them take him away to work their dangerous experiments upon, and you will have to answer for this!"