"Susan, Susan, take it. I cannot understand it. I cannot read more. Oh, Susan, what has the girl done?"
And she turned aside her chair, and began to cry stealthily; she was not a strong-nerved woman, and she had gathered but a vague impression that something terrible and irrevocable had occurred.
Susan was alarmed, no doubt; but she had plenty of self-command. She took the letter, and proceeded as swiftly as she could to get at the contents of it. Then she looked up in a frightened way at the parson, as if to judge in her own mind as to how far he should be trusted in this matter. And then she turned to the letter again—in a kind of despair.
"Mother," said she at last, "I understand no more than yourself what should be done. To think that all this should have been going on, and we knowing naught of it! But you see what my father wants; that is the first thing. Who is to go to Judith?"
At the mere mention of Judith's name a flash of dismay went to Prudence's heart. She knew that something must have happened; she at once bethought her of Judith's interviews with the person in hiding; and she was conscious of her own guilty connivance and secrecy; so that the blood rushed to her face, and she sat there dreading to know what was coming.
"Mother," Susan said again, and rather breathlessly, "do you not think, in such a pass, we might beg Master Blaise to give us of his advice? The Doctor being from home, who else is there?"
"Nay, if I can be of any service to you or yours, good Mistress Hall, I pray you have no scruple in commanding me," said the parson—with his clear and keen gray eyes calmly waiting for information.
Judith's mother was understood to give her consent; and then Susan (after a moment's painful hesitation) took up the letter.
"Indeed, good sir," said she, with an embarrassment that she rarely showed, "you will see there is reason for our perplexity, and—and I pray you be not too prompt to think ill of my sister. Perchance there may be explanations, or the story wrongly reported. In good truth, sir, my father writes in no such passion of anger as another might in such a pass, though 'tis but natural he should be sorely troubled and vexed."
Again she hesitated, being somewhat unnerved and bewildered by what she had just been reading. She was trying to recall things, to measure possibilities, to overcome her amazement, all at once. And then she knew that the parson was coolly regarding her, and she strove to collect her wits.