Mrs. Brantwell strove to reply, but her voice was choked. Taking her husband's arm, she followed them out.
The whole assembly arose en masse, and started for the door, casting threatening looks toward the sheriff, as though half meditating a rescue on the spot.
A plain, dark-looking coach, with a mounted policeman on either side, stood near the gate.
The sheriff paused when he reached it, and signified that they were to enter. Mr. Drummond handed Sibyl in and took his seat beside her; Captain Campbell, with a stern, gloomy look, followed; and then the sheriff sprang in, closed the door, and gave the order to drive on. Sibyl bent from the carriage window to wave a last adieu to Mrs. Brantwell; and the crowd standing on the church-steps and court-yard caught a momentary glimpse of her pale, beautiful face, with its sad, twilight smile, her dark, proud eyes more scornful than ever in their humiliation. That haunting face, so perfectly colorless, with its bright, jetty ringlets, its floating, mist-like vail, its orange blossoms—could it be the face of a murderess?
The next moment she fell back, the blinds were closed, the driver cracked his whip, the policemen put spurs to their horses, and the sad cavalcade moved rapidly away.
Hushed into the silence of death, the crowd stood breathlessly gazing after it, until the sound of the carriage wheels had died away—the last cloud of dust raised by the horses' feet vanished. Then pale, and awe-struck, they drew a deep breath and looked with tearful eyes into each other's pale faces, wondering if it were not all a dream.
Whispering in low, hushed tones beneath their breath, they separated, and wended their way to their respective homes; and in half an hour the church was as still, silent and deserted as the tomb.
Like wild-fire spread the news; and before night it was not only known to all the county round, but for many a mile distant. The whole community was electrified by a catastrophe so unheard-of. Children quit their play, women their work, lovers their whispers, and laborers their daily toil, to talk over the astounding arrest. The wealth, the respectability, the youth, the beauty, the sex, the well-known arrogance and pride of the race from which the accused had sprung, all tended to heighten and deepen the breathless interest. And the time and place—the occasion of occasions on which the arrest had taken place—that, more than all, sent a thrill of horror through every heart. Each circumstance of the interview in the church was exaggerated, and people listened and swallowed everything with avidity.
In the parsonage, meantime, a cloud of the deepest gloom had settled over its lately joyous inmates.
Mr. and Mrs. Brantwell, with the three bride-maids and Will Stafford, had immediately, upon the departure of Sibyl, entered their carriage and driven to the minister's house.