like the voice of the ravens.
Then Mrs. Ray began to think it possible that she might escape away
to Rachel without any further words. "I am very tired," she said,
"and I think I will go, Dorothea."

"Mother," said Mrs. Prime, "something must be done about this."

"Yes, my dear; she will talk to me to-night, and tell it me all."

"But will she tell you the truth?"

"She never told me a falsehood yet, Dorothea. I'm sure she didn't
know that the young man was to be here. You know if he did come back
from Exeter before he said he would she couldn't help it."

"And do you mean that she couldn't help being with him there,--all
alone? Mother, what would you think of any other girl of whom you
heard such a thing?"

Mrs. Ray shuddered; and then some thought, some shadow perhaps of a
remembrance, flitted across her mind, which seemed to have the effect
of palliating her child's iniquity. "Suppose--" she said. "Suppose
what?" said Mrs. Prime, sternly. But Mrs. Ray did not dare to go on
with her supposition. She did not dare to suggest that Mr. Rowan
might perhaps be a very proper young man, and that the two young
people might be growing fond of each other in a proper sort of way.
She hardly believed in any such propriety herself, and she knew that
her daughter would scout it to the winds. "Suppose what?" said Mrs.
Prime again, more sternly than before. "If the other girls left her
and went away to the brewery, perhaps she could not have helped it,"
said Mrs. Ray.

"But she was not walking with him. Her face was not turned towards
home even. They were standing together under the trees, and, judging
from the time at which I got home, they must have remained together
for nearly half an hour afterwards. And this with a perfect stranger,
mother,--a man whose name she had never mentioned to us till she was
told how Miss Pucker had seen them together! You cannot suppose that
I want to make her out worse than she is. She is your child, and my
sister; and we are bound together for weal or for woe."

"You talked about going away and leaving us," said Mrs. Ray, speaking
in soreness rather than in anger.

"So I did; and so I must, unless something be done. It could not be
right that I should remain here, seeing such things, if my voice is
not allowed to be heard. But though I did go, she would still be my
sister. I should still share the sorrow,--and the shame."

"Oh, Dorothea, do not say such words."

"But they must be said,