whilst all men looked in each
other's faces as if afraid of what they might see there.

Sir Hugh and his son were far away from Woodcrych at one of their newer
possessions some forty miles distant, and in their absence Lady Vavasour
felt doubly helpless. She shook off Joan's hand, and recommenced her
agitated pacing. Her daughter's calmness was incomprehensible apathy to
her. It fretted her even to see it.

"Thou hast no feeling, Joan; thou hast a heart of stone," she cried,
bursting into weak weeping. "Why canst thou not give me help or counsel
of some sort? What are we to do? What is to become of us? Wouldst have
us all stay shut up in this miserable place to die together?"

Joan did not smile at the feeble petulance of the half-distracted woman.
Indeed it was no time for smiles of any sort. The peril around and about
was a thing too real and too fearful in its character to admit of any
lightness of speech; and the girl did not even twit her mother with the
many sovereign remedies purchased as antidotes against infection, though
her own disbelief in these had brought down many laments from Lady
Vavasour but a few days previously.

Brought face to face with the reality of the peril, these wonderful
medicines did not inspire the confidence the sanguine purchasers had
hoped when they spent their money upon them. Lady Vavasour's hope seemed
now to lie in flight and flight alone. She was one of those persons
whose instinct is always for flight, whatever the danger to be avoided;
and now she was eagerly urging upon Joan the necessity for immediate
departure, regardless of the warning of her calmer-minded daughter that
probably the roads would be far more full of peril than their own house
could ever be, if they strictly shut it up, lived upon the produce of
their own park and dairy, and suffered none to go backwards and forwards
to bring the contagion with them.

Whether Joan's common-sense counsel would have ever prevailed over the
agitated panic of her mother is open to doubt, but all chance of getting
Lady Vavasour to see reason was quickly dissipated by a piece of news
brought to the mother and daughter by a white-faced, shivering servant.

The message was that the lackey who had but lately returned from
Guildford, whilst sitting over the kitchen fire with his cup of mead,
had complained of sudden and violent pains, had vomited and fallen down
upon the floor in a fit; whereat every person present had fled in wild