“I will put a special delivery on it,” she said, and her precaution availed to have the letter delivered to Mrs. Kenton the evening the family left the hotel, when it was too late to make any change in their plans, but in time to give her a bad night on the steamer, in her doubt whether she ought to let the family go, with this trouble behind them.
But she would have had a bad night on the steamer in any case, with the heat, and noise, and smell of the docks; and the steamer sailed with her at six o’clock the next morning with the doubt still open in her mind. The judge had not been of the least use to her in helping solve it, and she had not been able to bring herself to attack Lottie for writing to Richard. She knew it was Lottie who had made the mischief, but she could not be sure that it was mischief till she knew its effect upon Ellen. The girl had been carried in the arms of one of the stewards from the carriage to her berth in Lottie’s room, and there she had lain through the night, speechless and sleepless.
IX.
Ellen did not move or manifest any consciousness when the steamer left her dock and moved out into the stream, or take any note of the tumult that always attends a great liner’s departure. At breakfast-time her mother came to her from one of the brief absences she made, in the hope that at each turn she should find her in a different mood, and asked if she would not have something to eat.
“I’m not hungry,” she answered. “When will it sail?”
“Why, Ellen! We sailed two hours ago, and the pilot has just left us.”
Ellen lifted herself on her elbow and stared at her. “And you let me!” she said, cruelly.
“Ellen! I will not have this!” cried her mother, frantic at the reproach. “What do you mean by my letting you? You knew that we were going to sail, didn’t you? What else did you suppose we had come to the steamer for?”
“I supposed you would let me stay, if I wanted to: But go away, momma, go away! You’re all against me—you, and poppa, and Lottie, and Boyne. Oh, dear! oh, dear!” She threw herself down in her berth and covered her face with the sheet, sobbing, while her mother stood by in an anguish of pity and anger. She wanted to beat the girl, she wanted to throw herself upon her, and weep with her in the misery which she shared with her.