"Do you think it is no suffering to my mother to be called upon to do this, Emmeline, that you add to it by this weak interference?" replied Percy, sternly, before his mother could reply. "Shame! she has shamed us all enough. There wants little more to add to it."
But Emmeline's blue eyes never moved from her mother's face, and Miss Harcourt, longing to spare Mrs. Hamilton the suffering of such a proceeding, tried to persuade her to evade it, but she did not succeed.
"One word of confession—one evidence that her sin originated in a momentary temptation, that it conceals nothing darker—one real proof of penitence, and God knows how gladly I would have spared myself and her; but as it is, Lucy, Emmeline, do not make my duty harder."
Few as those words were, the tone that spoke them was enough. No more was said, and Mrs. Hamilton tried, but with very little success, to turn her children's thoughts to other and pleasanter things. Time seemed to lag heavily, and yet when the prayer bell sounded, it fell on every heart as some fearful knell which must have been struck too soon.
All were assembled in the library, and in their respective places, all but one, and Herbert waited her appearance.
"Tell Miss Fortescue that we are only waiting for her to commence prayers;" and Fanny, the young ladies' attendant, departed to obey, wondering at Miss Ellen's non-appearance, but hearing nothing unusual in her mistress's voice. She returned, but still they waited; again the door unclosed, and Emmeline bent forward in an attitude of agony and shame unable even to look at her cousin, whose place was close beside her; but the words she dreaded came not then—Herbert, at his mother's sign, commenced the service, and it proceeded as usual. The fearful struggle in Mrs. Hamilton's gentle bosom, who might read, save the all-pitying God, whom she so fervently addressed for strength and guidance? The voice of her son ceased, and the struggle was over.
"Before we part for the night," she said, when all but one had arisen, "it is necessary that the innocent should be so justified before you all, that he should no longer be injured by suspicion and avoidance. It is nearly two months since your master assured you of his own and of my perfect conviction that Robert Langford had told the truth, and that the missing notes had been unfortunately lost by him; not appropriated, as I fear most of you have believed, and are still inclined to do. The complete failure of every search for them has induced a very uncomfortable feeling among you all as to the person on whom suspicion of finding and appropriating them might fall, none but the household frequenting that particular path, and none being able to suppose that the storm could have so dispersed as to lose all trace of them. I acknowledge it was unlikely, but not so unlikely as that Robert Langford should have failed in honesty, or that any of my household should have appropriated or concealed them. All mystery is now, however, at an end; the missing notes have been traced and found; and that all suspicion and discomfort may be removed from among you, it becomes my duty to designate the individual who has thus transgressed every duty to God and man, not by the sin alone, but by so long permitting the innocent to suffer for the guilty, more especially as that individual is one of my own family"—for one moment she paused, whether to gain strength, or to give more force to her concluding words, no one could tell—"Ellen Fortescue!"