But now Maria was trying to come between her and Tom. And this case—now that she had lost it, she was rather sorry she had taken it to court. Tom’s name had been repeatedly called, and he had warned her against that. And her money, the money he had originally given her, had gone for nothing. If that had been all she would not have cared much, but she felt sure she had not yet heard the last of the fight and the trial. She wished she could believe that she had.
It was in an uneasy frame of mind that she ate her dinner by the window that evening, putting her plate on a chair in front of her. She was still eating when her aunt returned to the house for the purpose of further discussing the details of the case; and it was only then that Susan’s father and the others came into the sitting-room, which they had avoided all during the day, perceiving that Susan was too sorely sick at heart to appreciate conversation.
Miss Proudleigh, who, more than all of them together, was versed in the newspaper reports of the courts, had conceived a brilliant idea, and wished to lose no time before letting Susan know of it.
“I thinks, Susan,” she said, after she had sat down, “that the case was not try fair. An’ I thinks you ought to appeal.”
“Appeal?” asked her brother. “What is dat?”
Now Miss Proudleigh did not know exactly. So she answered vaguely, “Something to make de case try right.”
“That won’t help,” said Susan decisively. “De judge tell me I better drop the case, an’ I agree. It is all done away wid now. What is bothering me is the way de judge talk about Tom. It’s going to be all over Kingston to-morrow, for I saw the newspaper man writing it down. What a piece of bad luck fall upon a poor gurl to-day! An’ I didn’t do a single soul anyt’ing.”
“But don’t it finish now?” asked the old man hopefully.
“I don’t know about dat,” Susan replied. “Tom’s name call, an’ him going to vex.”
This was indeed what everybody feared; but Miss Proudleigh had a never-failing source of comfort in her principles as a religious woman.