But hitherto no one had dared to whisper how fast the distemper was encroaching in this very district.  Men still spoke of it as though it were far off, and might likely enough die out without spreading, so that now it was with terror akin to distraction that the poor lady heard through her servants that it had well-nigh reached their own doors.  One of the lackeys had had occasion to ride over to the town that very day, and had come back with the news that people there were actually dying in the streets.  He had seen two men fall down, either dead or stricken for death, before he could turn his beast away and gallop off, and the shops were shut and the church bell was tolling, 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 dismay, perfectly certain that he had brought home the distemper with him, and that every creature in the house was in deadly peril.