Silently he kissed the hand upon his sleeve, and as they stood thus looking into each other’s eyes, there came a sharp rapping at the door below. She went deathly pale for a moment, then waving him back, she stepped out into the hallway.
“It is only mother,” she said, after listening a moment; “she has been over to Aunt Clevering’s to make my peace for last night’s rudeness. What I said was in desperation; I know not what evil genius put me to it.”
He took her hand reverently for a moment. “’Twas no evil genius, but a brave spirit of self-sacrifice.”
She locked the door, and went down the stair singing. At the foot she called out, “Coming, mother!” and ran to hide the dishes she carried, then back to the door and undid it, still singing her merry ditty.
“Why should you bolt the door, my daughter, seeing I was to be gone only a few minutes?”
“I was upstairs straightening things a bit, and the town is so full of confusion that I felt a trifle nervous.”
“But here was the sentinel to protect you.”
“Oh, I quite forgot him!” she smiled with deprecating politeness at the sentinel, who had paused at the steps and was watching her with an ugly frown upon his sullen face. He touched his hat with a shrug, and moved on upon his beat.
But a new terror came to the girl; evidently the man suspected her, and of course his suspicion would be carried to Tarleton. Why had she lingered upstairs talking with Richard? Everything she did worked the wrong way. Would the day never end? She strove to make amends for her false step by singing Tory songs as she went about the house, and by sending the guard a dainty luncheon. It was perhaps an hour before she remembered to ask her mother the result of her interview with Aunt Clevering.
“Oh, but I had a sad scene of it! Joscelyn, your tongue will be the ruin of us; I know it, I know it! Neighbour after neighbour has taken offence at your outspoken Toryism; and now Ann Clevering, dear to me as a sister, says she hopes you will never darken her door again. And if you go not, why, neither can I; and so I am cut off from my best friend by your unneighbourly caprice! And think what we have been to each other!” Here sobs choked the unhappy woman’s utterance, and she could only turn her eyes reproachfully upon her daughter.