"Yes,"—the girl's lips trembled,—"shall I tell her you are here?"
"No." She threw aside her cloak as if in great haste; Aileen took it and laid it on a chair. Mrs. Googe went swiftly to the library door and rapped. Aileen heard the "Come in," and the exclamation that followed: "So you've come at last, have you!"
She knew that tone of voice and what it portended. She put her fingers in her ears to shut out further sound of it, and ran down the hall to the back passageway, closed the door behind her and stood there trembling from nervousness.—Had Mrs. Googe obtained some inkling that she had a message to deliver from that son?—a message she neither could nor would deliver? Did Champney Googe's mother know that she had seen that son in the quarry woods? Mrs. Googe's friends had told her the truth of the affair at the sheepfold, when it was found that her unanswered suspicions were liable to unsettle her reason.—Could she know of that message? Could any one?
The mere presence in the house of this suffering woman set Aileen's every nerve tingling with sickening despair. She determined to wait there in the dimly lighted back hall until Octavius should make his appearance, be it soon or late; he always came through here on his way to the ell.
Aurora Googe looked neither to right nor left on entering the room. She went straight to the library table, on the opposite side of which Mrs. Champney was still sitting where Octavius had left her nearly two hours before. She stemmed both hands on it as if finding the support necessary. Fixing her eyes, already beginning to glaze with the increasing fever, upon her sister-in-law, she spoke, but with apparent effort:
"Yes, I've come, at last, Almeda—I've come to ask help for my boy—"
Mrs. Champney interrupted her; she was trembling visibly, even Aurora Googe saw that.
"I suppose this is Octavius Buzzby's doings. When I gave him that message it was final—final, do you hear?"
She raised her voice almost an octave in the intense excitement she was evidently trying to combat. The sound penetrated to Aileen, shut in the back hall, and again she thrust her fingers into her ears. At that moment Octavius entered from the outer door.
"What are you doing here, Aileen?" For the first time in his life he spoke roughly to her.