"He’ll tell us nowt--nowt----!" Eliza began again on a high note, but Simon threw up his hand with a sudden snarl. "Whisht, can’t ye! You fair deafen a body, Eliza!" he flung out. "What’s all this stir about Geordie coming back?" "It’s a lie, that’s what it is!" Eliza exploded again, and again he silenced her with an angry "Whisht!" He kept his eyes on her a moment longer, as if daring her to speak, and then let them travel slowly and almost reluctantly to his wife’s face. He opened his lips to address her and then changed his mind, turning instead to the crew beyond the door. "Tell me about it, can’t you?" he demanded angrily. "One o’ you speak up! Emily Marion--Addison--you wi’ the fat face!" He jerked a contemptuous thumb at Elliman, who went crimson with extreme disgust. "One o’ you tell me the meaning o’ this precious hullaballoo!" Elliman looked across to Sally for help, but did not get it. Instead, she turned her eyes away, ignoring his appeal. "It’s hardly my place to enlighten you, sir," he said, with an offended shrug, "but I don’t mind telling you the little I know. Apparently your son Geordie is expected soon, and with a fat purse in his pocket to buy him a welcome home." "Geordie’s coming back, d’ye say?" Simon stared at him with bewildered eyes. "So Mrs. Thornthwaite has given us to understand." "And wi’ brass? Plenty o’ brass? _Geordie_ wi’ brass?" "Enough and to spare, if all we’re told is true." "Ay, but that’s just what it isn’t!" Eliza broke out on a peacock scream, and this time Will actually shook her into silence. The poignancy of the moment had hushed the rest of the audience into complete quiet. There was no sound in the room but Eliza’s breathing as Simon turned again to look at his wife. "What’s it all about, Sarah?" he asked quietly, though his voice shook. "You never said nowt about Geordie coming to me." In the pause that followed Sally drew away from her aunt’s side, as if conscious that this moment was for the two of them alone. The silence waited for Sarah’s answer, but she could not bring herself to speak. In the heat of her victory she had forgotten that Simon also would hear the lying tale. It was the only hitch in the splendid machinery of the lie, but it was enough in itself to bring the whole of it to the ground. Here was Simon in front of her, asking for the truth, and if a hundred Elizas had been present she could still have given him nothing but the truth. But indeed, at that moment, Eliza, and all that Eliza stood for, was swept away. In that hush and sudden confronting of souls Sarah and Simon were indeed alone. "Geordie’s never coming, is he, Sarah?" he asked anxiously. "Nay, you’ve dreamed it, my lass! And he’s rich, d’ye say?--why, that settles it right out! Why, it was nobbut the other day he was writing home for brass!" Still she did not speak, and quite suddenly he was wroth, vexed by her mask-like face and the sudden diminishing of his hope.