“Leave the room, and do not come again until I ring.”
“My!” ejaculated the woman, as soon as she was on the landing, “to think of such a gentle-looking little thing being able to talk like that! P’raps master’s caught a tartar now.”
There was a gleam of hope, then, after all. Poor Becky was not the vacant idiot she had always appeared. Kate felt that she had made one friend, and trembling with eagerness she went to the writing-table and wrote quickly a few lines to Jenny Leigh, briefly explaining her position, and begging her to lay the matter before her brother and ask his help and advice.
This she inclosed and directed, and then sat gazing before her, conjuring the scene to follow at the cottage, and the indignation of Leigh. And as she thought, the warm blood tinged her pale cheeks once more, and she covered her face with her hands, to sit there sobbing for a few minutes before slowly tearing up the letter till the fragments were too small ever to be found and read by one curious to know their contents.
Gladly as she would have seen Pierce Leigh appear and insist upon her taking refuge with his sister, she felt that she could not send such an appeal to those who were comparative strangers; and though she would not own to it even to herself, she felt that there were other reasons why she could not write.
An hour of intense mental agony and dread passed, and she had to strive hard to keep down the terrible feeling of panic which nearly mastered her, and tempted her to rush down the stairs to try once more to escape, or to go to one of the front windows, throw it open, and shriek for help.
“It would be an act of madness,” she sighed, as she recalled Garstang’s words respecting the sick lady. “And they would believe him!” she cried, while the feeling of helplessness grew and grew as she felt how thoroughly she was in Garstang’s power.
Then came the thought of her aunt and uncle, her natural protectors, and she determined to write to them. James Wilton would fetch her away at once, for he was her guardian; and surely now, she told herself, she was woman enough to insist upon proper respect being paid to her wishes. She could set at defiance any of her cousin’s advances; and her conduct in leaving showed itself up in its strongest colours, as being cowardly—the act of a child.
With a fresh display of energy she wrote to her aunt, detailing everything, and bidding her—not begging—to tell her uncle to come to her rescue at once. But no sooner was the letter written than she felt that her aunt would behave in some weak, foolish way, and there would be delay.
She tore up that letter slowly, and after hiding the pieces, she sat there thinking again, with her brow wrinkled, and the look of agony in her face intensifying.