“We tidied the best room for the lady, and Miss Susan’s little closet; and Mary had out the best sheets, for she says——”
“Mary—where’s Mary?” cried Mrs. Vincent, suddenly.
“I know no more nor a babe,” cried Williams, wringing her hands. “She’s along with Miss Susan—wherever that may be—and the one in the blue veil.”
“Go on, go on!” cried Vincent.
But his mother did not echo his cry. Her strained hand fell upon her lap with a certain relaxation and relief; her gaze grew less rigid; incomprehensible moisture came to her eyes. “Oh, Arthur, there’s comfort in it!” said Mrs. Vincent, looking like herself again. “She’s taken Mary, God bless her! she’s known what she was doing. Now I’m more easy; Williams, you can sit down and tell us the rest.”
“Go on!” cried Vincent, fiercely. “Good heavens! what good can a blundering country girl do here?—go on.”
The women thought otherwise; they exchanged looks of sympathy and thankfulness; they excited the impatient young man beside them, who thought he knew the world, into the wildest exasperation by that pause of theirs. His mother even loosed her bonnet off her aching head, and ventured to lean back under the influence of that visionary consolation; while Vincent, aggravated to the intolerable pitch, sprang up, and, once more seizing Williams by the arm, shook her unawares in the violence of his anxiety. “Answer me!” cried the young man; “you tell us everything but the most important of all. Besides this girl—and Mary—who was with my sister when she went away?”
“Oh Lord! you shake the breath out of me, Mr. Arthur—you do,” cried the woman. “Who? why, who should it be, to be sure, but him as had the best right after yourself to take Miss Susan to her mamma? You’ve crossed her on the road, poor dear,” said the adherent of the house, wringing her hands; “but she was going to her ma—that’s where she was going. Mr. Arthur’s letter gave her a turn; and then, to be sure, when Mr. Fordham came, the very first thing he thought upon was to take her to her mamma.”
Vincent groaned aloud. In his first impulse of fury he seized his hat and rushed to the door to pursue them anyhow, by any means. Then, remembering how vain was the attempt, came back again, dashed down the hat he had put on, and seized upon the railway book in his pocket, to see when he could start upon that desperate mission. Minister as he was, a muttered curse ground through his teeth—villain! coward! destroyer!—curse him! His passion was broken in the strangest way by the composed sounds of his mother’s voice.
“It was very natural,” she said, with dry tones, taking time to form the words as if they choked her; “and of course, as you say, Williams, Mr. Fordham had the best right. He will take her to his mother’s—or—or leave her in my son’s rooms in Carlingford; and as she has Mary with her—Arthur,” continued his mother, fixing a warning emphatic look upon him as he raised his astonished eyes to her face, “you know that is quite right: after you—Mr. Fordham is—the only person—that could have taken care of her in her journey. There, I am satisfied. Perhaps, Williams, you had better go to bed. My son and I have something to talk of, now I feel myself.”