Grace had risen to her feet, with her usual eagerness of impulse, “Do you not hear me--do you not understand me, Miss Anna? We will take nothing; we will have no compromises, no more talk even, not a word said. We will have nothing, nothing to do with it! We have a right to be heard as well as you----”
“And I think I also have a right to be heard,” cried Geoff--he was calm between the excitement of the others; “I am not without a voice. Whatever you say, justice must be done, and justice suggests this course. Yes, Aunt Anna, whatever you say, I have a right to be heard. It is for our own comfort, without thought of them.”
“I want no such comfort,” she cried. “I gave in to your mother’s nonsense, and allowed them to be asked here. I allowed them to be asked because they were----”
“Aunt Anna! do you wish me to tell them in so many words why you wanted them----?”
“Geoff, Geoff!” cried his mother, in alarm.
The girls paid but little attention to this quarrel as it raged. They did not comprehend even what it was about. “We had better go away as this is not our affair,” Grace said, with a stately little bow. And Milly, too, rose to go with her sister--when the conflict around suddenly ceased, and the two girls, who seemed to have been pushed aside by the other more energetic emotions, suddenly became again the centre of the scene, and the chief persons in it. What was it? only the entrance of old Simmons with a yellow envelope in his hand.
The others stopped short in their conflict. They acknowledged with a little awe the presence of something greater which had come into their midst. They looked on in silence while the girls, clinging together, read their telegram. Then there was a little pause.
“We must go home at once,” said Grace, as well as she could speak for tears. “We do not require to wait. There are steamers every day, I suppose. Would you answer this for us, Cousin Geoffrey? and say we want no one. We will come.”
It required some power of divination to make out the last words, which were almost choked with the weeping to which Milly had entirely given way.
“Go at once?” said Miss Anna, “without an escort--without seeing anything?”
The girls gave her, both together, an indignant look; and then they turned and went out of the room, moving in one step, like one creature, with a soft sweep as of wings. So at least Geoffrey thought, looking after them with the tenderest pity in his eyes. They did not walk but disappeared, flying to be alone and get some comfort from their tears.