"Go, and welcome," cried Tring, in her sympathy; "don't hurry back. What's our gowns by the side of this dreadful shock? Poor Martha Ann!"
"I can't believe she's gone; I can't believe it," reiterated the dressmaker, as she hastily flung on her cloak and bonnet; "there was never a modester girl lived than Martha Ann. It's some dreadful untruth that has got about."
The way in which Mr. Carr had learnt it so soon was this—one of the outside passengers of the coach, a young man of the name of Hart, had been only going as far as Purford, where the coach dropped him. He hurried over his errand there, and hurried back to Westerbury, big with the importance of what he had seen, and burning to make it known. Taking his course direct to Mr. Carr's, and only stopping to tell everybody he met on the way, he found that gentleman at home, and electrified him with the recital. From thence he ran to the house of Edward Hughes, and found Miss Hughes in a sea of tears, and her brother pacing the rooms in what Mr. Hart called a storm of passion. The young lady, it seems, had been already missed, and one of the gossips to whom Mr. Hart had first imparted his tale, had flown direct with it to the brother and sister.
"Why don't you go after her?" asked Hart; "I'd follow her to the end of the world if she was my sister. I'd take it out of him, too."
Ah, it was easy to say, why don't you go after her? But there were no telegraphs in those days, and there was not yet a rail from London to Westerbury. Robert Carr and the girl were half-way to London by that time; and the earliest conveyance that could be taken was the night mail.
"It's of no use," said Edward Hughes, moodily; "they have got too great a start. Let her go, ungrateful chit! As she has made her bed, so must she lie on it."
Mary Hughes got back to Mrs. Arkell's: she had found it all too true. Martha Ann had taken her opportunity to steal out of the house, and was gone. Mary Hughes, in relating this, could not sneak for sobs.
"My sister says she could be upon her Bible oath, if necessary, that at twenty-five minutes past eight Martha Ann was still at home. She called out something to her up the stairs, and Martha Ann answered her. She must have crept down directly upon that, and got off, and run all the way along the bank, and across the three-cornered field. She—she——" the girl could not go on for sobs.
Tring's eyes were full. "Is your sister much cut up?" she asked.
"Oh, Tring!"—and indeed the question seemed a bitter mockery to Mary Hughes—"I'm sure Sophia has had her death-blow. What a thing it is that I was engaged out to work to-day! If I had been at home, she might not have got away unseen."