“Has she another book written, think you?” she inquired in a tone full of interest. “Of course we shall see that she gets a better share of Mr. Lowndes’ thousand pounds than she did for her first.”
“She has not written a line since ‘Evelina,’” said Esther. “To be sure, I have not been her confidante since I got married, but I know that she was so frightened at the thought of what she had done that she would not write another page.”
“Frightened! What had she to be frightened about?” cried Mrs. Burney in a tone of actual amazement.
“Goodness knows,” said Esther with a laugh.
The sound of the dinner-bell coming at that moment had about it also something of the quality of a long, loud, sonorous outburst of laughter with a cynical tinkle at the last.
The group in that room dissolved in all directions with exclamations of dismay at being overtaken by the dinner-hour so unprepared.
“It is all over now,” said Susy to Lottie, when they were alone in their room. “I was afraid when she ushered us so formally into the library that we would be forced to tell our secret.”
“I made up my mind that no torture of the rack or wild horses would unseal my lips,” said Susy, earnestly. “Do you know, Lottie, I feel quite lonely without our secret.”
“It is just the same with me, dear,” said Lottie. “I feel as if I were suddenly cut off from some great interest in life—as if I had gone downstairs one morning and found that someone had stolen the piano. I wonder if it was Hetty who told the padre.”
“Make haste and we shall soon learn all,” said Susy.