"Oh, Arthur, my dear boy," cried his mother, "don't you see we must put the best face on it now? Everybody must not know that Susan has been carried away by a---- O God, forgive me! don't let _me_ curse him, Arthur. Let us get away from Lonsdale, dear, before we say anything. Words will do no good. Oh, my dear boy, till we know better, Mr. Fordham is Susan's betrothed husband, and he has gone to take care of her to Carlingford. Hush--don't say any more. I am going to compose myself, Arthur, for my child's sake," cried the mother, with a smile of anguish, looking into her son's face. How did she drive those tears back out of her patient eyes? how did she endure to talk to the old servant about what was to be done to-morrow--and how the sick lady was next door--till the excited and shivering attendant could be despatched up-stairs and got out of the way? Woman's weaker nature, that could mingle the common with the great; or woman's strength, that could endure all things--which was it? The young man, sitting by in a sullen, intolerable suspense, waiting till it was practicable to rush away through the creeping gloom of night after the fugitives, could no more understand these phenomena of love and woe, than he could translate the distant mysteries of the spheres. CHAPTER XVII. Early morning, but black as midnight; bitter cold, if bitterer cold could be, than that to which they entered when they first came to the deserted house; the little parlour, oh, so woefully trim and tidy, with the fire laid ready for lighting, which even the mother, anxious about her son, had not had the heart to light; the candle on the table between them lighting dimly this speechless interval; some shawls laid ready to take with them when they went back again to the earliest train; Mrs. Vincent sitting by with her bonnet on, and its veil drooping half over her pale face, sometimes rousing up to cast hidden looks of anxiety at her son, sometimes painfully saying something with a vain effort at smiling--what o'clock was it? when did he think they could reach town?--little ineffectual attempts at the common intercourse, which seemed somehow to deepen the dreadful silence, the shivering cold, the utter desolation of the scene. Such a night!--its minutes were hours as they stole by noiseless in murderous length and tedium--and the climax of its misery was in the little start with which Mrs. Vincent now and then woke up out of her own thoughts to make that pitiful effort to talk to her son.