“He can do nothing,” he said, “he can but turn her on to the road. And I do not think he will dare.”
“Ah! Beatrice Atherton?” questioned Mary, who had a clearer view of the situation now.
“Yes—Beatrice Atherton. He fears that we shall tell her. He cannot send Margaret to Overfield or Great Keynes now.”
“And if he turns her out after all?”
Sir James looked at her keenly.
“We must leave the rest to God,” he said.
The village was well awake by the time that they had finished their talk and had had something to eat. The drama at the convent had leaked out through the boy who served the altar there, and a little group was assembled opposite the windows of the cottage to which the monk had been seen to ride up an hour or two before. It seemed strange that no priest had been near them, but it was fairly evident that the terror was too great.
As the four came out on to the road, a clerical cap peeped for a moment from the churchyard wall and disappeared again.
They went down towards the convent along the grey road, in the pale autumn morning air. Mary still seemed to herself to walk in a dream, with her father and brother on either side masquerading in strange character; the familiar atmosphere had been swept from them, the background of association was gone, and they moved now in a new scene with new parts to play that were bringing out powers which she had never suspected in them. It seemed as if their essential souls had been laid bare by a catastrophe, and that she had never known them before.
For herself, she felt helpless and dazed; her own independence seemed gone, and she was aware that her soul was leaning on those of the two who walked beside her, and who were masculine and capable beyond all her previous knowledge of them.