But through her tremendous excitement she remembered one trifling consideration. She would not betray poor baby Floss. Mrs Eyrecourt should never know how she had learnt the truth.
Volume Three—Chapter Six.
Friends in Need.
Did I speak once angrily...
...You woman I loved so well,
Who married the other?
R. Browning.
The days were almost at their longest, but it was late enough to be nearly dark one evening, when a fly rattled along the street in Wareborough where the Thurstons lived, and drew up at the curate’s door. Frank was out: he had been sent for by a dying parishioner, and had warned his wife he might be detained till late—she had better not sit up for him. Sydney had just made up her mind to act upon this injunction, and was gathering her feminine odds-and-ends about her, previous to going to bed, when the unexpected sound of an arrival startled her in the midst of her housewifely “redding up.”
She was standing in the middle of her pretty little drawing-room, her work-basket in one hand, the book she had been reading in the other, the lamplight falling softly on her fair, quiet face and deep mourning dress—a peaceful, home-like picture, it seemed to the stranger, who suddenly came in upon the scene. A tall, black figure, with veiled face and shrouding drapery, stood in the doorway. Sydney was not hysterical, so she did not scream, but for a moment or two her heart beat fast, and her breathing seemed short and irregular. Who could it be?
“Sydney,” said the veiled woman, “don’t be startled, dear. It is only I.”
“Eugenia!” exclaimed the sister, scarcely less startled than before. “Can it be you, Eugenia? Oh, what is wrong? What is the matter?”