He left Mabella and came to her.
“Come outside,” she said, “I want you to do something for me.” Then as they got beyond Mrs. Ranger’s hearing she continued: “I want you to go over and fetch father and Temperance. Sidney is bent upon being married by Mr. Didymus and—I have consented.” There was a kind of agony in the regard she gave Lanty. “Will you go?” she said; her voice sounded far away to herself, and all at once it seemed to her as if she could hear the blood rushing through her veins, with a roaring as of mill-streams. And Lanty, all unconscious of this, stood smiling before her. Truly, if Vashti Lansing sinned, she also suffered.
“It’s a capital idea,” said Lanty heartily. “You are a lucky girl, Vashti. I’ll go at once; have you told Mabella yet?”
The pent-up forces of Vashti’s heart leaped almost beyond the bounds.
“Go,” she said, with a strange sweet shrillness in her voice. “Go, at once.”
“I will, of course, I will,” said Lanty, and he suited the action to the word. He paused an instant to tell Mabella, and added: “You go and talk to Vashti, she’s as nervous as you were.”
Then he departed and Vashti watched him, wondering a little why she had been born to such a perverse fate. As she turned from the empty distance where he had disappeared it was to be met by Mabella’s arms, and kisses, and congratulations, and exclamations. Poor Mabella! All was so well meant, and surely we would not blame her; and yet, though a creature be worthy of death, we do not like to see it tormented and baited. Vashti Lansing, with her lawless will, her arrogant self-confidence, her evil determination, was yet to be pitied that day.
The short autumnal day had drawn down to night. Lamps twinkled from every room in the parsonage. A great stillness brooded over the house.
The kitchen was filled with whispering women, groups of men lingered near the house and horses were tied here and there to the palings. The word had gone abroad that the old man who prayed for them so long was leaving them that night. There would be little sleep in Dole during its hours.
“The license has come,” whispered Mabella to Temperance, and Temperance slipped out from among the women and found Nathan where he loitered by the door.