And there was a long silence in the big still room where the family had met together after their misfortune. How few families are there which have not known such sorrowful silences: when there is one absent to be bitterly blamed, and some one in fretful anguish cries out, and the others heartbroken, try for excuses and find nothing to say. This was how it was. The mother and daughter had talked it over till there seemed no more to add, but Sir John had not had this relief. All his pain and anger had been locked up in his own bosom, and now they burst forth. “What did he do it for? What did he suppose he could make by it?” Sir John did not believe that his son thought anything could be made by it, but how was he to repress the intolerable pang in his own heart for Arthur’s loss and ruin? And yet he was angry that nobody defended Arthur when he stopped speaking. He was angry also when the women attempted to defend him. It did not much matter which it was. He was silent for a moment; and the dull sky outside, and the dull air with its double rain from the clouds and the trees filled up the great windows with dreariness, adding another element of depression, and Lady Curtis gazed drearily into the fire stooping over it, to get a little warmth, and Lucy stood by the table motionless with tears upon her cheek. Then Sir John burst forth again.
“If there had been anything to justify it, you know! One has heard of a man losing his head for a great beauty, something out of the way--a syren, you know. But a village girl, and, from all I hear, a virago, a temper--”
“Don’t let us speak of her,” said Lady Curtis, with a movement of disgust. “It’s enough that he has done it. Oh, the foolish, foolish boy! Separated himself entirely from his own sphere, and his natural life, and us.”
“Mamma,” said Lucy, breathless, “I don’t want to excuse Arthur; but what could you say worse of him, both papa and you, if he had done something _wrong_?”
They both turned upon her, furious: yet so thankful to her for standing up for him with whom both were wroth beyond words.
“Wrong!” they both cried in one breath. “Are you mad, child? Do you think he has not done wrong?”
“He has been very, very foolish,” cried Lucy, growing pale. “Yes, he is wrong; oh, yes, I know he is wrong. But if he had done something shameful, _wicked_, mother--people’s sons have done so--sin--crime--you could not take it more seriously, you could not say worse of him.”