The surprise, the shock of seeing her at that hour and in that way, was extreme; and Judith's first words as her hands fell on Jacqueline's shoulder were:
"I know it," answered Jacqueline, in a voice as unlike her own as her looks; "I have been out in the rain for hours and hours!"
"What is the matter with you?" cried Judith, taking hold of her. "Something dreadful has happened!"
"Dreadful enough for me!" replied Jacqueline, white and dry-eyed.
"What is it?" Judith was not easily frightened, but she trembled as she spoke.
"Everything!" answered Jacqueline. "In the first place, I have left Freke. That broke my heart!"
"Yes. I didn't go to Aunt Steptoe's. I got off at the station and Freke was there. He took me to a minister's and got him to marry us. The man could hardly read and write, and he said something about a license; but Freke gave him fifty dollars, and he performed the ceremony."
Judith caught hold of her, to see if she were really in the flesh, talking in this way.
"Don't hold me so hard, Judith. I will tell you all I can; but I feel as if I should die, I am so weak and ill--" and she suddenly began to cough violently. Judith ran and got her a glass of wine. The first idea in her mind was, not the poor, deluded child, but Throckmorton.
"But where is Freke--and your father and mother?--O Jacqueline, Jacqueline!"
"Don't reproach me, Judith. But for you I would never have returned. My father and mother know nothing about it. Freke found out they were yet in Richmond. If they had been at Barn Elms, I don't think I ever would have had the courage to come back. The feeling soon came to me that I had committed a great wrong in marrying Freke; and then--and then--he told me perhaps we weren't married at all in Virginia, and so I would have to go with him out to the place--somewhere in the West--and be married to him straight and right."
"If Freke had never committed any other wrong in his whole life, his telling you that made him deserve to be killed!" cried Judith.
"Don't say a word against Freke," said Jacqueline, a new anger blazing up in her eyes. "I love Freke; it almost kills me when I think I may never see him again, for I ran away from him. At first I thought all the time of the trouble I should bring upon you all. I could see my father's gray head sink down in his hands. I could imagine how my mother would shut herself up in her room as she did when Beverley died. They had always thought so little of me that it gave me a kind of triumph when I remembered, 'They'll have to think about me now!'"