It was not expected that the party from the Grange would be at Fransdale Church that day. Mrs. Cooper was inly disconcerted when she saw that they were there. She found their inquiries after Melicent, when service was over, difficult to parry.
"A little disagreement?" she murmured, smiling, meaningly, and speaking as though taking Mrs. Helston into special confidence—always her manner when she was not telling the truth—"just a little question of discipline between dear Melicent and her uncle. We must hope for the best; but it needs much patience and kindness to eradicate the results of such training."
Mrs. Helston, though furious, realised that no indignation on her part would help Melicent's cause. She longed to ask questions, but knew she had no right to interfere in the matter at all. Mrs. Cooper, smiling and chattering, got away with adroitness on which she prided herself, with no questions asked as to whether Melicent would be allowed to go to the picnic next day.
Meanwhile Tommy and her pupils were in a terrible panic. They dared not guess what had been found out. Gwen, on considering the matter, could not believe it possible that it could be her last night's escapade, because, if her father had by some mysterious means seen anything, she felt sure that he would have taken the culprit in the act. By no means a student of character, she forgot that he never took action in the heat of the moment. They all crept home from church with shaken nerves, fully expecting that the storm would burst on their return. But nothing happened. Whatever Melicent's offence, she had certainly not incriminated them.
They were all so burdened by guilty consciences that, had it been their custom to be natural before their parents, anybody could have seen that something was wrong. However there was nothing unusual, at the Vicarage, in embarrassed, sulky silence, or monosyllabic answers: so all passed off without disturbance, and they were free to stare at one another in the seclusion of the schoolroom, from which the captive was now removed, and ask what could possibly be "up."
Mr. and Mrs. Cooper were meanwhile at a loss. It was certain that they could not keep their niece among their own children, but what other course was feasible? They could not afford to support her at school. She was too young to be turned out to get her own living, not to mention the probability of her disgracing herself and them, wherever they placed her.
Her aunt went in during the afternoon, and tried her blandishments, but was confronted with a steady, cold assertion that the girl had nothing to say.
That night, Melicent slept in another room, with a screwed-down window and a locked door; and in the solitude she broke down utterly, and wept pitifully for her dead father. She yearned for the presence of somebody she knew—somebody that believed in her; she even thought, with a gust of something like tenderness, of Bert Mestaer himself.
But in the morning, when her aunt brought her breakfast, she was self-contained and proud as ever. She heard the waggonette from the Grange drive up to the door, in dazzling sunshine. From her window she saw it pass out of the gate, after a twenty minute's delay caused by Mrs. Cooper's not being ready—saw Maddie, Gwen and Theo, in the new blouses she had made and hats which she had trimmed.
They had not been long gone before the key turned in the lock and Tommy crept in. She looked flurried and eager.