AND where has Mrs. Acton been all this morning? Off to the
Hall, very soon after Grace had got away; and she rung at the side
entrance, hard by the kitchen, most fortunately caught Sarah Stack
about, and had a good long gossip with her; telling her, open-mouthed,
all about Ben Burke having found a shawl of Mrs. Quarles's on the
island; and how, it being very rotten, yes, and smelling foul, Ben had
been fool enough to burn it; what a pity! how could the shawl have got
there? if it only could ha' spoken what it knew! And the bereaved
gossips mourned together over secrets undivulged, and their evidence
destroyed. As to the crockery, for a miraculous once in life, Mrs. Acton
held her tongue about a thing she knew, and said not a syllable
concerning it. Roger would be mad to lose the money. Just at parting
with her friend Mary Acton was going out by the wrong door, through the
hall, but luckily did no more than turn the handle; or she never could
have escaped bouncing in upon the lovers' interview, and thereby
occasioning a chaos of confusion. For, be it whispered, the step-dame
was not a little jealous of her ready-made daughter's beauty, persisted
in calling her a child, and treated her any thing but kindly and
sisterly, as her full-formed woman's loveliness might properly have
looked for. Only imagine, if the Hecate had but seen Jonathan's lit-up
looks, or Grace's down-cast blushes; for it really slipped my
observation to record that there were blushes, and probably some cause
for them when the keep-sake was given and accepted; only conceive if
the step-mother had heard Jonathan's afterward soliloquy, when he was
watching pretty Grace as she tripped away--and how much he seemed to
think of her eyes and eye-lashes! I am reasonably fearful, had she heard
and seen all this--Poll Acton's nails might have possibly drawn blood
from the cheeks of Jonathan Floyd. As it was, the little god of love
kindly warded from his votaries the coming of so crabbed an antagonist.