He was silent for a time while she regarded him nervously, listening in the meantime as if expecting some one. She was afraid. Her husband had left the city only that morning; but behind him he had left an escutcheon who could—and was, as capable of making matters as disagreeable. It was Ethel, and Mrs. McCarthy was aware that that one was upstairs. The household had been conducted according to the desires and dictates of the Elder. Wherefore she was uneasy. Baptiste observed her now, and made mental note as to the cause of the expression of uneasiness upon her face.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
She did not reply, but sighed.
"What's the matter, Mother Mary?" he asked kindly. Her love and admiration asserted itself momentarily in the look with which she replied to him. How in that moment she wanted to tell him all, and to be to him as she had always wanted to be. But only a moment was she so, then that look of hunted fear overspread her face again, and she turned uneasily toward the stairs.
"Won't you tell me what the matter is, mother?" she heard him again. For answer the quick glance over her shoulder was sufficient. It was as if to say. "Hush! Enemies are near!" He then estimated that the Elder had gone to the southern part of the state, but Ethel must be near, and it was Ethel whom the mother feared. He understood then, that the Reverend had a cunning way of having Ethel do his bidding. Because she was possessed of his evil disposition, he could trust her to carry out anything on this order—that is, providing she disliked the person in question, and that was usually the case, for, like him, there were few people whom she really liked.
"What have you been doing to my child?" he heard from Mother Mary, presently. He studied her face again and saw that she was trying to reckon with him herself, although he knew that it mattered little what she thought or did on the whole.
"Has she told you what I have been doing to her?" he said. She shifted uncomfortably, looked around a little, listened for a sound that she expected to hear sooner or later, and then replied, and in doing so, he saw that she was again subservient to the old training.
"My husband told me," she countered.
"Oh," he echoed.
"You have not acted with discretion," she said again, and he understood her. Acting with "discretion" would been never to have given the Reverend an excuse for making that trip....