Sophia's lip began to tremble; her eyes roved piteously. Well might the prospect terrify her, for it meant not only exile from her lover, but an exile which she saw might be permanent. For how was he to find her? To Cuckfield, the family seat, he might trace her easily; but in the poor hamlet on the Sussex coast, where her aunt, who had tripped in her time and paid the penalty, dragged on a penurious existence as the widow of a hedge-parson, not so easily. There a poor girl might eat out her heart, even as her aunt had eaten out hers, and no redress and no chance of rescue. Even had she the opportunity of writing to her lover she did not--unhappy thought--know where he lived.
Mrs. Northey read her dismay, saw the colour fade in her cheek, and the tears gather in her eyes, and with remorseless determination, with cruel enjoyment, drove the nail home.
"There'll be no Vauxhall there," she sneered, "and mighty few drums or routs, my dear! It's likely your first masquerade will be your last; and for the wine-merchant actor that you were to see at Goodman's Fields tomorrow, you may whistle for him; and for your dear Amorevoli. It's to be hoped, Miss Lucy, you'll find your Thomas worth it," she continued, alluding to the farce that held the town, "when you get him." And then, changing her ground, with no little skill, "See here, child," she said, in the tone of one willing to argue, "are you going on with this silliness? Think, my dear, think, while it is time, for 'twill be too late at Chalkhill. You don't want to go and be buried in that hole till your brother comes of age?"
Sophia, resentful but terrified, subdued both by the prospect and by the appeal to her reasonableness, had hard work to refrain from tears as she uttered her negative. "No, I--I don't want to go," she stammered.
"I thought not; then you shall have one more chance," Mrs. Northey answered, with a fair show of good nature. "If you'll give me your word not to write to him, you shall have a week to think of it before you go. But you'll keep your room--on that I must insist; there you'll have time to think, and I hope by the end of the week you'll have come to your senses, my dear. If not, you'll go to Aunt Leah."
The mixture of severity and kindness was clever, and it had its effect upon poor Sophia, who stood weighing the alternatives with a rueful face. While she remained in town, if she might not see him, she was still near him, and he near her. She would not be lost to him nor he to her; and then, what might not happen in a week? "I will promise," she murmured, in a low uncertain tone.
"Good," Mrs. Northey answered; "then you may go to your room."
And to her room Sophia would have gone, in a mood fairly open to the influence of reason and solitude. But in an evil moment for himself Mr. Northey, smarting under a defeat which his wife's victory rendered the more humiliating, thought he espied an opportunity of restoring his dignity.
"Yes, you may go," he said sourly; "but take this with you. You will see there," he continued, fussily selecting a letter from a pile on the table, and handing it to her, "what are the terms in which a gentleman seeks an alliance with a lady. It is from Sir Hervey, and I shall be much surprised if it does not produce a very different impression on you from that which that person has made."
"I do not want it," Sophia answered; and held out the letter between her finger and thumb, as if it had an evil odour.