This attitude of Roland's was a very cruel one. It taught Denas to feel that her secrecy was not her fault. She continually told herself that she would have been glad to talk over her future plans with her parents if they would only have listened to her; that it was not her fault if they were unreasonable and bigoted--not her fault if her mind had grown beyond her surroundings; that her father and mother ought to consider that her education and her companionship with Elizabeth Tresham had led naturally to the craving for a wider life; and that if they give the first they ought in common justice to be ready to consider the consequences with her.
"But they will not," she thought angrily. "They want me to settle down and be content with Tris Penrose. I dare not tell them that Roland loves me. Roland dare not tell them either. I cannot say a word to them about my voice and the money it may make. Roland says any reasonable father and mother would be quite excited at the prospect and glad to go to London with me. But will my father and mother do so? Oh, no! In order to do myself justice I am obliged to run away. It is too bad! Any sensible person would feel sorry for me."
With such specious reasoning she satisfied her conscience, and the afternoon wore away in gathering gloom and fierce scuds of rain. It was nearly dark at four o'clock, and she rose and brought a small round table to the hearth and began to put on it the tea-cups and the bread and butter. As she did so Joan entered the room. Her arms were full of clean clothing, but glancing at the table she threw them above her head, and regardless of the scattered garments cried out:
"Denas! Look to the loaf! Some poor ship be in distress! Pray God it be not your father's."
Then Denas with trembling hands lifted the loaf, which she had inadvertently laid down wrong side upward, and placed it, with a "God save the ship and all in her," in the proper position. But Joan was thoroughly unnerved by the ominous incident, and she sat down with her apron over her head, rocking herself slowly to her inaudible prayer; while Denas, with a resentful feeling she did not try to understand, gathered up the pieces of linen and flannel her mother had apparently forgotten.