“Mother!  I think such threats very uncalled for.  What will people say?  And how can poor Julius defend himself against two ladies?  I call it taking advantage of us.”

“‘Taking advantage?’ Oh, no!  Oh, no!—­Charlotte, my dear, give me my cloak.”

The little lady was not to be either frightened or entreated; and she deigned Julius—­who had been hastily summoned by Sophia—­no answer, either to his arguments or his apologies.

“It is enough,” she cried, with a slight quiver in her voice, “it is enough!  You turn me out of the home he gave me.  Do you think that the dead see not? know not?  You will find out, you will find out.”  And so, leaning upon Charlotte’s arm, she walked slowly down the stairway, and into the dripping, soaking, gloomy afternoon.  It was indeed wretched weather.  A thick curtain of mist filled all the atmosphere, and made of daylight only a diluted darkness, in which it was hard to distinguish the skeletons of the trees which winter had stripped.  The mountains had disappeared; there was no sky; a veil of chilling moisture and depressing gloom was over every thing.  But neither Charlotte nor her mother was at that hour conscious of such inoffensive disagreeables.  They were trembling with anger and sorrow.  In a moment such a great event had happened, one utterly unconceived of, and unprepared for.  Half an hour previous, the unhappy mother had dreaded the breaking away from her old life, and had declined to discuss with Charlotte any plan tending to such a consummation.  Then, suddenly, she had taken a step more decided and unusual than had ever entered Charlotte’s mind.

The footpath through the park was very wet and muddy.  Every branch dropped water.  They were a little frightened at what they were doing, and their hearts were troubled by many complex emotions.  But fortunately the walk was a short one, and the shortest way to the rectory lay directly through the churchyard.  Without a word Mrs. Sandal took it; and without a word she turned aside at a certain point, and through the long, rank, withered grasses walked straight to the squire’s grave.  It was yet quite bare; the snow had melted away, and it had a look as desolate as her own heart.  She stood a few minutes speechless by its side; but the painfully tight clasp in which she held Charlotte’s hand expressed better than any words could have done the tension of feeling, the passion of emotion, which dominated her.  And Charlotte felt that silence was her mother’s safety.  If she spoke, she would weep, perhaps break down completely, and be unable to reach the shelter of the rectory.

The rector was walking about his study.  He saw the two female forms passing through the misty graveyard, and up to his own front door; but that they were Mrs. Sandal and Charlotte Sandal, was a supposition beyond the range of his life’s probabilities.  So, when they entered his room, he was for the moment astounded; but how much more so, when Charlotte, seeing her mother unable to frame a word, said, “We have come to you for shelter and protection!”