“Yes, that will come to the same thing,” said Miss Augustine quietly to herself.
She stood opposite to the agitated pair, with her hands folded into her great sleeves, her hood hanging back on her shoulders, her black veil falling softly about her pale head. There was no emotion in her countenance. Her mind was not alarmed about her sister. The prayer was a precautionary measure, to keep Susan out of temptation—not anything strenuously called for by necessity. She sighed softly as she made the reflection, that to name her sister before the Litany was said would answer her purpose equally well; and thus with a faint smile, and slight wave of her hand toward the chaplain and his wife, she turned and went away. The ordinary politenesses were lost upon Miss Augustine, and the door stood open behind her, so that there was no need for Dr. Richard to get up and open it; and, indeed, they were so used to her ways, her comings and her goings, that he did not think of it. So the old gentleman sat with his wife by his side, backing him up, gazing with consternation, and without a word, at the gray retreating figure. Mrs. Richard, who saw her husband’s perturbed condition, comforted him as best she could, patting his arm with her soft little hand, and whispering words of consolation. When Miss Augustine was fairly out of the house, the distressed clergyman at last permitted his feelings to burst forth.
“Pray for Susan Austin publicly by name!” he said, rising and walking about the room. “My dear, it will ruin us! This comes of women having power in the Church! I don’t mean to say anything, my dear, injurious to your sex, which you know I respect deeply—in its own place; but a woman’s interference in the Church is enough to send the wisest man out of his wits.”
“Dear Henery,” said Mrs. Richard, for it was thus she pronounced her husband’s name, “why should you be so much disturbed about it, when you know she is mad?”
“It is only her enemies who say she is mad,” said Dr. Richard; “and even if she is mad, what does that matter? There is nothing against the rubrics in what she asks of me now. I shall be forced to do it; and what will Miss Susan say? And consider that all our comfort, everything depends upon it. Ellen, you are very sensible; but you don’t grasp the full bearing of the subject as I do.”
“No, my dear, I do not pretend to have your mind,” said the good wife; “but things never turn out so bad as we fear,” she said a moment after, with homely philosophy—“nor so good, either,” she added, with a sigh.
CHAPTER XIV.
MISS SUSAN came home on the Saturday night. She was very tired, and saw no one that evening; but Martha, her old maid, who returned into attendance upon her natural mistress at once, thought and reported to the others that “something had come over Miss Susan.” Whether it was tiredness or crossness, or bad news, or that her business had not turned out so well as she expected, no one could tell; but “something had come over her.” Next morning she did not go to church—a thing which had not happened in the Austin family for ages.
“I had an intuition that you were yielding to temptation,” Miss Augustine said, with some solemnity, as she went out to prayers at the almshouses; after which she meant to go to Morning Service in the church, as always.
“I am only tired, my dear,” said Miss Susan, with a little shiver.