Poor Carry Brattle was famished, and ate the bread and bacon which were set before her, and drank the cold tea, with an appetite which was perhaps unbecoming the romance of her position. Her sister stood over her, cutting a slice now and then from the loaf, telling her that she had taken nothing, smoothing her hair, and wishing for her sake that the fire were better. “I’m afeard of father, Fan—awfully; but for all that, it’s the sweetest meal as I’ve had since I left the mill.” Then Fanny was on her knees beside the returned profligate, covering even the dear one’s garments with her kisses.
It was late before Fanny laid herself down by her sister’s side that night. “Carry,” she whispered when her sister was undressed, “will you kneel here and say your prayers as you used to?” Carry, without a word, did as she was bidden, and hid her face upon her hands in her sister’s lap. No word was spoken out loud, but Fanny was satisfied that her sister had been in earnest. “Now sleep, my darling;—and when I’ve just tidied your things for the morning, I will be with you.” The wanderer again obeyed, and in a few moments the work of the past two days befriended her, and she was asleep. Then the sister went to her task with the soiled frock and the soiled shoes, and looked up things clean and decent for the morrow. It would be at any rate well that Carry should appear before her father without the stain of the road upon her.
As the lost one lay asleep there, with her soft ringlets all loose upon the pillow, still beautiful, still soft, lovely though an outcast from the dearest rights of womanhood, with so much of innocence on her brow, with so much left of the grace of childhood though the glory of the flower had been destroyed by the unworthy hand that had ravished its sweetness, Fanny, sitting in the corner of the room over her work, with her eye from moment to moment turned upon the sleeper, could not keep her mind from wandering away in thoughts on the strange destiny of woman. She knew that there had been moments in her life in which her great love for her sister had been tinged with envy. No young lad had ever waited in the dusk to hear the sound of her footfall; no half-impudent but half-bashful glances had ever been thrown after her as she went through the village on her business. To be a homely, household thing, useful indeed in this world, and with high hopes for the future—but still to be a drudge; that had been her destiny. There was never a woman to whom the idea of being loved was not the sweetest thought that her mind could produce. Fate had made her plain, and no man had loved her. The same chance had made Carry pretty—the belle of the village, the acknowledged beauty of Bullhampton. And there she lay, a thing said to be so foul that even a father could not endure to have her name mentioned in his ears! And yet, how small had been her fault compared with other crimes for which men and women are forgiven speedily, even if it has been held that pardon has ever been required.
She came over, and knelt down and kissed her sister on her brow; and as she did so she swore to herself that by her, even in the inmost recesses of her bosom, Carry should never be held to be evil, to be a castaway, to be one of whom, as her sister, it would behove her to be ashamed. She had told Carry that she would “never cast it up against her.” She now resolved that there should be no such casting up even in her own judgment. Had she, too, been fair, might not she also have fallen?
At five o’clock on the following morning the miller went out from the house to his mill, according to his daily practice. Fanny heard his heavy step, heard the bar withdrawn, heard the shutters removed from the kitchen window, and knew that her father was as yet in ignorance of the inmate who had been harboured. Fanny at once arose from her bed, careful not to disturb her companion. She had thought it all out, whether she would have Carry ready dressed for an escape, should it be that her father would demand imperiously that she should be sent adrift from the mill, or whether it might not be better that she should be able to plead at the first moment that her sister was in bed, tired, asleep—at any rate undressed—and that some little time must be allowed. Might it not be that even in that hour her father’s heart might be softened? But she must lose no time in going to him. The hired man who now tended the mill with her father came always at six, and that which she had to say to him must be said with no ear to hear her but his own. It would have been impossible even for her to remind him of his daughter before a stranger. She slipped her clothes on, therefore, and within ten minutes of her father’s departure followed him into the mill.
The old man had gone aloft, and she heard his slow, heavy feet as he was moving the sacks which were above her head. She considered for a moment, and thinking it better that she should not herself ascend the little ladder—knowing that it might be well that she should have the power of instant retreat to the house—she called to him from below. “What’s wanted now?” demanded the old man as soon as he heard
