"And reason enough. You might think Satan himself stood at his elbow, the wicked things he said."
This statement, coming from the mild and cow-like Mrs. Cooper, caused Felicia Verity the liveliest surprise. She glanced enquiringly from one to the other of the little group, reading constraint and hardly repressed excitement in the countenance of each. Their aspect and behaviour struck her, in fact, as singular to the point of alarm.
"Mary," she asked, a trifle breathlessly, "has anything happened? Where is Miss Damaris?"
"Hadn't she got back to The Hard, ma'am, before you came out?"
"No—why should she? You and the other servants always reach home first."
"Miss Damaris went out before the rest," Mrs. Cooper broke forth in dolorous widowed accents. "And no wonder, pore dear young lady, was it, Mr. Patch? My heart bled for her, ma'am, that it did."
Miss Felicia, gentle and eager, so pathetically resembling yet not resembling her famous brother, grew autocratic, stern as him almost, for once.
"And you allowed Miss Damaris to leave church alone—she felt unwell, I suppose—none of you accompanied her? I don't understand it at all," she said.
"Young Captain Faircloth went out with Miss Damaris. She wished it, ma'am," Mary declared, heated and resentful at the unmerited rebuke. "She as good as called to him to come and take her out of church. It wasn't for us to interfere, so we held back."
"Captain Faircloth? But this becomes more and more extraordinary! Who is
Captain Faircloth?"