The two girls stared, confused and troubled. Bee got up from the sofa and put her hands to her head, her eyes fixed upon Mrs. Leigh with an appalled and horrified look. She had not asked herself of what Aubrey had been accused. She had fled from him before the dreadful thought of relationships she did not understand, of something which was the last insult to her, whatever it might be in itself. “Vulgar vice!” The girls were cowed as if some guilt had been imputed to themselves. “You are not like anything I have known, you girls of the period,” cried the angry mother. “You are acquainted with such things as I at my age had never heard of. You make accusations! But now--he shall answer for himself,” she said, flaming with righteous wrath. Mrs. Leigh went to the bell and rang it so violently that the sound echoed all over the house. “Go and ask your master to come here at once, directly; I want him this moment,” she said, stamping her foot in her impatience. And then there was a pause. The man went off and was seen from the window to cross the street on his errand. Then Bee rose, her tears hastily dried up, pushing back from her forehead her disordered hair. “I had better go. If you have sent for Mr. Leigh it will be better that I should go.” Mrs. Leigh was almost incapable of speech. She took Bee by the shoulders and put her back almost violently on the sofa. “You shall stay there,” she said, in a choked and angry voice. What a horrible pause it was! The girls were silent, looking at each other with wild alarm. Betty, who had blurted out the story, but to whom the idea of repeating it before Aubrey--before a man--was unspeakable horror, made a step towards the door. Then she said, “No, I will not run away,” with tremendous courage. “It is not our fault,” she added, after a pause. “Bee, if I have got to say it again, give me your hand.” “It is I who ought to say it,” said Bee, pale with the horror of what was to come. “Vulgar vice!” And she to accuse him, and to stand up before the world and say that was why! It seemed a long time, but it was really only a few minutes, before Aubrey appeared. He came in quickly, breathless with haste and suspense. He expected, from what his mother had told him, to find Miss Lance and Colonel Kingsward there. He came into the agitated room and found, of all people in the world, Bee and Betty, terrified, and his mother, walking about the room sounding, as it were, a metaphorical lash about their ears, in the frank passion of an elder woman who has the most just cause of offence and no reason to bate her breath. There was something humorous in the tragic situation, but to them it was wholly tragic, and Aubrey, seeing for the first time after so long an interval the girl he loved, and seeing her in such strange circumstances, was by no means disposed to see any humorous side.