“Richard will not be angry with me when he returns,” Joscelyn answered confidently; and Betty kissed her softly.
“Oh, Joscelyn, if it could only have been Richard instead of Captain Barry to win even this much of your heart! But there, I must be going; some one is coming down the street.”
“You will come again sometime?”
“Yes, for I have wanted you so much.”
“And I you.”
They held each other close for a moment, and then Betty ran across the street and dodged into the shadow of her own door. Her visit helped Joscelyn immeasurably, in that it gave her a sense of sympathy. But she could not shake off the depression of Richard’s news; it was a culmination of the long strain upon her nervous system. In the succeeding days she had fits of silent brooding which sometimes, in the sombre twilights, ended in tears. For the first time since the news of Lexington, her neighbours found her grave and preoccupied. The fearless badinage with which she had met every attack upon her partisan creed was suddenly stayed, as though she heard not their thrusts and innuendoes. And Mistress Strudwick watched her with a vague uneasiness, longing to see the old, quick passion flame up now and then.
But this frame of mind was rudely broken by the thrilling news of the fall of Yorktown. She had expected it for days, but the reality roused all of her former spirit, and put her once more upon the defensive.
“Lord Cornwallis has surrendered?” she said calmly to Amanda Bryce and the two gossips, who had run in to tell her the news and to gloat over her discomfiture. “’Tis most courteous of you to bring me the information so swiftly; you are quite out of breath with your race. I shall immediately write my sincere condolences to his lordship that wrong has triumphed over right. Will you not have a cup of tea with me, ladies?—there is no longer any tax. No? Then I have the honour to wish you a very good morning. Pray come again when you have further tidings.”
She set the door open for them with the air of a sovereign condescending to her subjects; and they went away humiliated and furious.
“From the airs she gives herself, one would think Joscelyn Cheshire had royal blood in her veins,” they said angrily. But when Mistress Strudwick heard of the scene, she laughed long and heartily.