ever marry her now."

"He?"

"Do you not know the person she was engaged to has gone with her?"

"I don't know anything."

"They walked from here to Ullerton and went to London. Her father came
round to us yesterday after your uncle had been to him making
inquiries, and it is all as clear as day. Till your uncle told him, he
did not know about the money, and had been too--not well enough that
day to notice Emma's not having come home. Your uncle's visit sobered
him. We telegraphed to the police. They've been traced to London.
That's all. Except," and she glared at Priscilla with all the wrath of
a prophet whose denunciations have been justified, "except that one
more life is ruined."

"I'm very sorry--very, very sorry," said Priscilla, so earnestly, so
abjectly even, that her eyes filled with tears. "I see now how
thoughtless it was of me."

"Thoughtless!"

"It was inexcusably thoughtless."

"Thoughtless!" cried Mrs. Morrison again.

"If you like, it was criminally thoughtless."

"Thoughtless!" cried Mrs. Morrison a third time.

"But it wasn't more than thoughtless. I'd give anything to be able to
set it right. I am most truly grieved. But isn't it a little hard to
make me responsible?"

Mrs. Morrison stared at her as one who eyes some strange new monster.
"How amazingly selfish you are," she said at last, in tones almost of
awe.

"Selfish?" faltered Priscilla, who began to wonder what she was not.

"In the face of such total ruin, such utter shipwreck, to be thinking
of what is hard on you. You! Why, here you are with a safe skin, free
from the bitter anxieties and temptations poor people have to fight
with, with so much time unoccupied that you fill it up with mischief,
with more money than you know what to do with"--Priscilla pressed her
hands together--"sheltered, free from every care"--Priscilla opened
her lips but shut them again--"and there is that miserable Emma,
hopeless, branded, for ever an outcast because of you,--only because
of you, and you think of yourself and talk of its being hard."

Priscilla looked at Mrs. Morrison, opened her mouth to say something,
shut it, opened it again, and remarked very lamely that the heart
alone knows its own bitterness.

"Psha," said Mrs. Morrison, greatly incensed at having the Scriptures,
her own speciality, quoted at her. "I'd like to know what bitterness
yours has known, unless it's the bitterness of a bad conscience. Now
I've come here to-day"--sh