Then there was a pause, through which was heard only the sound of Mrs. Russell’s sobbing. Lucy sat undecided, not knowing what to do. She was indignant, but more surprised than indignant at the accusation; and she was entirely unaccustomed to blame, and did not know how to defend herself. She sat with her heart beating and listened, now and then trying to remonstrate, to make an appeal, but in vain. At last, the moment came when her accuser had poured forth all she had to say. But this silence was almost as painful as the unexpected violence that preceded it. To be accused wrongfully, if terrible, has still some counterbalancing effect in the aroused _amour-propre_ of the innocent victim; but to watch the voice of the accuser quenched by emotion, to hear the sobs dying off, then bursting out again, the red eyes wiped, then filling--all in a silence which her own lips were too much parched with agitation to permit her to break, was almost more hard upon Lucy. She had become very pale, and she did not know what to say. More entirely guiltless than she felt herself, no one could have been. She was so innocent that she had no defense to make; and the attack took from her all the thoughts of which her mind had been full. All the more the silence weighed upon her. It was terrible to sit there with her eyes on the floor, and say nothing. At last she managed to falter forth, “May I see Jock, Mrs. Russell, before I go?” “I suppose you will want to remove him,” Mrs. Russell said. “Oh, I quite understand that! I expected nothing less. The brother of a rich heiress is out of place with a poor ruined family. Everything is forsaking us. Let him go, too--let him go, too!” “Indeed,” said Lucy, recovering her composure a little. “I was not thinking of that. I meant only--” “Never mind what you meant, Miss Trevor; it is better he should go. Things have gone too far now,” said the disturbed woman. “All the rest are going--we shall have to go ourselves. Oh, I thought it would not matter so long as my Bertie-- God forgive them! God forgive them!” she said, with trembling lips. “I thought it would all come right, and everything succeed, when my boy-- But we are ruined, ruined! I don’t know where we are to turn or what we are to do.” “Mrs. Russell, will you let me say something to you?” Lucy said. This cry of distress had restored her to herself. “I meant to have said it before; it is not because of what has happened. It was all settled in my mind before; I was only waiting till I could arrange with my guardian. Mrs. Russell, papa left some money to be given away--” Here she made a little pause for breath. Her companion made no remark, but sat, lying back in her chair, with her handkerchief to her eyes. “It was a good deal of money,” said Lucy. “He told me I was not to throw it away, but to give enough to be of real use. I thought--that you would like to have some of it, Mrs. Russell; that--it might do you a little good.”