A strange change passed over Miss Susan’s face. She had been ready to laugh, impatient of the long explanation, and scarcely able to conceal her desire to get rid of her visitors. She sat poising the pen in her hand with which she had been writing, turning over her papers, with a smile on her lip; but when Dr. Richard came to those last words, her face changed all at once. She dropped the pen out of her hand, her face grew gray, the smile disappeared in a moment, and Miss Susan sat looking at them, with a curious consciousness about her, which the excellent couple could not understand.
“What day was that?” she said quickly, almost under her breath.
“Thursday morning,” added Mrs. Richard. “If you remember, Henery, you got a note about it quite early; and after chapel she spoke--”
“Yes, it was quite early; probably the note,” said the chaplain, “was written on Wednesday night.”
Miss Susan was ashy gray; all the blood seemed to have gone out of her. She made them no answer at first, but sat brooding, like a woman struck into stone. Then she rose to her feet suddenly as the door opened, and Augustine, gray and silent, came in, gliding like a mediæval saint.
“My sister is always right,” said Miss Susan, almost passionately, going suddenly up to her and kissing her pale cheek with a fervor no one understood, and Augustine least of all. “I always approve what she does;” and having made this little demonstration, she returned to her seat, and took up her pen again with more show of preoccupation than before.
What could the old couple do after this but make their bow and their courtesy, and go off again bewildered? “I think Miss Susan is the maddest of the two,” said Mrs. Richard, when they had two long fields between them and Whiteladies; and I am not surprised, I confess, that they should have thought so, on that occasion, at least.
Miss Susan was deeply struck with this curious little incident. She had always entertained a half visionary respect for her sister, something of the reverential feeling with which some nations regard those who are imperfectly developed in intelligence; and this curious revelation deepened the sentiment into something half-adoring, half-afraid. Nobody knew what she had done, but Augustine knew somehow that she had been in temptation. I cannot describe the impression this made upon her mind and her heart, which was guilty, but quite unaccustomed to guilt. It thrilled her through and through; but it did not make her give up her purpose, which was perhaps the strangest thing of all.
