Salem Chapel

the shock had been to Susan a horrible convulsion, shaking earth and heaven. The mother and son went together to the bedside to look at the unhappy cause of all their sorrows⁠—she clinging with her tender hand to his arm, wistful now, and afraid in the depths of her heart lest Arthur, who was only a man, might be hard upon Susan in her terrible abasement. It was more than a year since Vincent had seen his sister. Was it Susan? The grandeur of the stricken form, the features sublimed and elevated, the majestic proportions into which this awful crisis of fate had developed the fair-haired girl of Lonsdale, struck her brother with unspeakable awe and pity. Pity and awe: but yet another feeling mingled in the wonder with which he gazed upon her. A thrill of terror came over him. That frightful, tropical blaze of passion, anguish, and woe which had produced this sudden development, had it developed no unknown qualities in Susan’s heart? As she lay there in the majesty of unconsciousness, she resembled more a woman who could avenge herself, than a soft girl, the sudden victim of a bad man. Vincent turned away from the bed with an involuntary shudder. He would not, could not, look at her again: he left his mother to her unceasing vigil, and himself went to his own room, to try if rest were possible. Rest was not easy in such a terrible complication of affairs; but weariness is omnipotent with youth. He did sleep by snatches, in utter fatigue and exhaustion⁠—slept long enough to secure for himself the unspeakable torture of waking to the renewed horror of a new day.

XXVI

Next morning the minister rose to the changed life and world which now surrounded his way, if not with much less excitement, at least with a more familiar knowledge of all the troubles which encompassed him. As he sat over the pretended breakfast, for which he had no appetite, and not even heart enough to make a show of eating, hearing close by the voice of his sister’s delirium, sometimes in faint murmurs, sometimes rising into wild outcries of passion, and pondered all the circumstances of this frightful calamity, it is not wonderful that his heart fainted within him. He had found out quickly enough that it was an officer of justice whom Tozer had succeeded, by what means he could not tell, in removing from his house. His landlady knew all the facts sufficiently well to be by times reproachful and by times sympathetic. The other lodgers in the house, some of whom had already left for fear of pollution, were equally aware of all the circumstances of the case; and it was impossible to hope that a tale so exciting, known to so many, could be long of spreading. The minister seemed to himself to look ruin in the face, as he sat in profound dejection, leaning his head in his hands. He had committed his sister’s interests into the hands of the best attorney he could hear of in Dover, that watch and search might be made on the spot for any further information; and now the only thing possible to be done was to secure some still more skilful agent in London to superintend the case, and set all the machinery of detection in motion to discover Mrs. Hilyard. Vincent had nothing in the world but the income which he drew from the liberality of Salem; an income which could ill stand the drain of these oft-repeated journeys, not to speak of the expenses of Susan’s defence. All that the minister had would not be enough to retain a fit defender for her, if she had to undergo the frightful ordeal of a trial. The very thought of it drove her unhappy brother desperate. Would it not be better if she died and escaped that crowning misery, which must kill her anyhow, if she survived to bear it? But these ponderings were as unprofitable as they were painful. When he had seen his mother, who whispered to him accounts of Susan’s illness, which his mind was too much preoccupied to understand, he went away immediately to the railway, and hastened to town. While he stood waiting in the lawyer’s office, he took up listlessly, without knowing what he was doing, the newspaper of the day. There he found the whole terrible tale made into a romance of real life, in which his sister’s name, indeed, was withheld, but no other particular spared. As he stood wiping the heavy dew from his forehead, half frantic with rage and despair, the quick eye of his misery caught a couple of clerks in another corner of the office, talking over another newspaper, full of lively interest and excitement. It was Susan’s story that interested them; the compiler had heightened with romantic details those hideous bare facts which had changed all his life, and made the entire world a chaos to Vincent; and all over the country by this time, newspaper readers were waking up into excitement about this new tale of love, revenge, and crime. The poor minister put down the paper as if it had stung him, and drew back, tingling in every nerve, from the table, where he could almost hear the discussion which was going on about Miss ⸻; where she could have escaped to, and whether she would be found. It restored him to his senses and self-command when he found himself face to face with the cool lawyer, who waited for his tragic story as a matter of business, and who had nothing to do with the heartbreaks or the disgrace which it involved. He was detained there for some time, giving as full an account as he could of all the circumstances, and describing as well as he could his reasons for suspecting Mrs. Hilyard, and her mysterious appearance at the scene of the murder. Vincent perceived, with