Mrs. Vincent came to a dead stop as they passed the doors of Salem, which were ajar, taking resolution in the desperateness of her uncertainty--for the feelings in the widow's mind were not confined to one burning impulse of terror for Susan, but complicated by a wonderful amount of flying anxieties about other matters as well. _She_ knew, by many teachings of experience, what would be said by all the connection, when it was known that the minister's mother had been in Carlingford without going to see anybody--not even Mrs. Tufton, the late minister's wife, or Mrs. Tozer, who was so close at hand. Though her heart was racked, Mrs. Vincent knew her duty. She stopped short in her fright and distress with the mild obduracy of which she was capable. Before rushing away out of Carlingford to protect her daughter, the mother, notwithstanding her anxiety, could not forget the injury which she might possibly do by this means to the credit of her son. "Arthur, the chapel is open--I should like to go in and rest," she said, with a little gasp; "and oh, my dear boy, take a little pity upon me! To see the state you are in, and not to know anything, is dreadful. You must have a vestry, where one could sit down a little--let us go in." "A vestry--yes; it will be a fit place," cried Vincent, scarcely knowing what he was saying, and indeed worn out with the violence of his own emotions. This little persistent pause of the widow, who was not absorbed by any one passionate feeling, but took all the common cares of life with her into her severest trouble, awoke the young man to himself. He, too, recollected that this enemy who had stolen into his house was not to be reached by one wild rush, and that everything could not be suffered to plunge after Susan's happiness into an indiscriminate gulf of ruin. All his own duties pricked at his heart with bitter reminders in that moment when he stood by the door of Salem, where two poor women were busy inside, with pails and brushes, preparing for Sunday. The minister, too, had to prepare for Sunday. He could not dart forth, breathing fire and flame at a moment's notice, upon the serpent who had entered his Eden. Even at this dreadful moment, in all the fever of such a discovery, the touch of his mother's hand upon his arm brought him back to his lot. He pushed open the mean door, and led her into the scene of his weekly labours with a certain sickening disgust in his heart which would have appalled his companion. _She_ was a dutiful woman, subdued by long experience of that inevitable necessity against which all resistance fails; and he a passionate young man, naturally a rebel against every such bond. They could not understand each other; but the mother's troubled face, all conscious of Tufton and Tozer, and what the connection would say, brought all the weight of his own particular burden back upon Vincent's mind. He pushed in past the pails with a certain impatience which grieved Mrs. Vincent.