Then came the departure, Laura by this time full of terrors, but not knowing what to do, nor how else she was to get home. And, oh! that grinning band of youths round the door—Mason's triumphant leap into the cart and boisterous farewell to his friends—and that first perilous moment, when the pony had almost backed into the mill stream, and was only set right again by half a dozen stalwart arms, amid the laughter of the street!
As for the wild drive through the dark, she shivered again, half with anger, half with terror, as she thought of it. How had they ever got home? She could not tell. He was drunk, of course. He seemed to her to have driven into everything and over everything, abusing the schoolmaster and Mr. Helbeck and his mother all the time, and turning upon her when she answered him, or showed any terror of what might happen to them, now with fury, and now with attempts at love-making which it had taken all her power over him to quell.
Their rush up the park had been like the ride of the wild horseman. Every moment she had expected to be in the river. And with the approach of the house he had grown wilder and more unmanageable than before. "Dang it! let's wake up the old Papist!" he had said to her when she had tried to stop his singing. "What harm'll it do?"
As for the shame of their arrival, the very thought of Mr. Helbeck standing silent on the steps as they approached, of Hubert's behaviour, of her host's manner to her in the hall, made her shut her eyes and hide her red face against Fricka for sympathy. How was she ever to meet Mr. Helbeck again, to hold her own against him any more!
* * * * *
An hour later Laura, very carefully dressed, and holding herself very erect, entered Augustina's room.
"Oh, Laura!" cried Mrs. Fountain, as the door opened. She was very flushed, and she stared from her bed at her stepdaughter in an agitated silence.
Laura stopped short.
"Well, what is it, Augustina? What have you heard?"
"Laura! how can you do such things!"