Chapter 9 - Page 2

and drew near the door.

On the threshold she stood listening. The house was silent.
Decorations were visible in the passage, and also the carefully swept
and sanded path to the gate, which she was to have trodden as a
bride; but the sparrows hopped over it as if it were abandoned; and
all appeared to have been checked at its climacteric, like a clock
stopped on the strike. Till this moment of confronting the suspended
animation of the scene she had not realized the full shock of the
convulsion which her disappearance must have caused. It is quite
certain--apart from her own repeated assurances to that effect in
later years--that in hastening off that morning to her sudden
engagement, Margery had not counted the cost of such an enterprise;
while a dim notion that she might get back again in time for the
ceremony, if the message meant nothing serious, should also be
mentioned in her favour. But, upon the whole, she had obeyed the
call with an unreasoning obedience worthy of a disciple in primitive
times. A conviction that the Baron's life might depend upon her
presence--for she had by this time divined the tragical event she had
interrupted on the foggy morning--took from her all will to judge and
consider calmly. The simple affairs of her and hers seemed nothing
beside the possibility of harm to him.

A well-known step moved on the sanded floor within, and she went
forward. That she saw her father's face before her, just within the
door, can hardly be said: it was rather Reproach and Rage in a human
mask.

'What! ye have dared to come back alive, hussy, to look upon the
dupery you have practised on honest people! You've mortified us all;
I don't want to see 'ee; I don't want to hear 'ee; I don't want to
know anything!' He walked up and down the room, unable to command
himself. 'Nothing but being dead could have excused 'ee for not
meeting and marrying that man this morning; and yet you have the
brazen impudence to stand there as well as ever! What be you here
for?'

'I've come back to marry Jim, if he wants me to,' she said faintly.
'And if not--perhaps so much the better. I was sent for this morning
early. I thought--.' She halted. To say that she had thought a
man's death might happen by his own hand if she did not go to him,
would never do. 'I was obliged to go,' she said. 'I had given my
word.'

'Why didn't you tell us then, so that the wedding could be put off,
without making fools o' us?'

'Because I was afraid you wouldn't let me go, and I had made up my
mind to go.'

'To go where?'

She was silent; till she said, 'I will tell Jim all, and why it was;
and if he's any friend of mine he'll excuse me.'

'Not Jim--he's no such fool.