All at once, as she was hastening on, the memory struck her, like a new thought, of how he had doubted her honor. She stopped, stock-still, in the middle of the road. Then, like a smitten flower from the stem, she dropped by the side of a broad elm-tree, and for the first time since her widowhood gave way to a passion of tears.
“What’s this?” said a rough voice, close in front, and a dark lantern flashed out its hideous wide circle. “What are you doing here? Now, then, look sharp!”
The Baroness staggered to her feet.
“It is I,” she stammered—“Mevrouw van Helmont;” and then, recognizing the local policeman, “I am not well, Juffers; help me home.”
The man escorted her in amazed if deferential silence. He could understand even a Baroness being suddenly taken ill, but he could not understand a Baroness being out there alone at this time of night. It was not difficult for her to read his thoughts as he tramped on, lantern in hand; she gladly dismissed him, with an unwisely large gratuity, as soon as the lights of the house came in sight.
“Well!” he mused, standing, clumsily respectful, with the broad silver piece on his open palm, “she isn’t too ill to walk, anyway. Straight as a dart. Blest if I didn’t think it was Tipsy Liza! I wish that she’d march as easy when I takes her to the lock-up.”
Hephzibah came forward as the young Baroness entered the house. With unusual politeness, but with averted eyes, she took that lady’s hat. And Ursula, returning to her room, where her copy-books lay patiently, painfully waiting, felt that henceforth she was, more or less, in this silent servant’s power.
“I will go on,” she said, doggedly, settling down to “debtor” and “creditor,” “with God’s help or without.”