“Yes, but that won’t keep ’em from lyin’.”

The two sat still for some minutes, Martha gazing into vacancy, Jane lying back in her chair, her eyes closed.  One emotion after another coursed through her with lightning rapidity—­indignation at the charge, horror at the thought that any of her friends might believe it, followed by a shivering fear that her father’s good name, for all her care and suffering, might be smirched at last.

Suddenly there arose the tall image of Doctor John, with his frank, tender face.  What would he think of it, and how, if he questioned her, could she answer him?  Then there came to her that day of parting in Paris.  She remembered Lucy’s willingness to give up the child forever, and so cover up all traces of her sin, and her own immediate determination to risk everything for her sister’s sake.  As this last thought welled up in her mind and she recalled her father’s dying command, her brow relaxed.  Come what might, she was doing her duty.  This was her solace and her strength.

“Cruel, cruel people!” she said to Martha, relaxing her hands.  “How can they be so wicked?  But I am glad it is I who must take the brunt of it all.  If they would treat me so, who am innocent, what would they do to my poor Lucy?”

CHAPTER X

A LATE VISITOR

These rumors never reached the doctor.  No scandalmonger ever dared talk gossip to him.  When he first began to practise among the people of Warehold, and some garrulous old dame would seek to enrich his visit by tittle-tattle about her neighbors, she had never tried it a second time.  Doctor John of Barnegat either received the news in silence or answered it with some pleasantry; even Ann Gossaway held her peace whenever the doctor had to be called in to prescribe for her oversensitive throat.

He was aware that Jane had laid herself open to criticism in bringing home a child about which she had made no explanation, but he never spoke of it nor allowed anyone to say so to him.  He would have been much happier, of course, if she had given him her confidence in this as she had in many other matters affecting her life; but he accepted her silence as part of her whole attitude toward him.  Knowing her as he did, he was convinced that her sole incentive was one of loving kindness, both for the child and for the poor mother whose sin or whose poverty she was concealing.  In this connection, he remembered how in one of her letters to Martha she had told of the numberless waifs she had seen and how her heart ached for them; especially in the hospitals which she had visited and among the students.  He recalled that he himself had had many similar experiences in his Paris days, in which a woman like Jane Cobden would have been a veritable angel of mercy.

Mrs. Cavendish’s ears were more easily approached by the gossips of Warehold and vicinity; then, again she was always curious over the inmates of the Cobden house, and any little scraps of news, reliable or not, about either Jane or her absent sister were eagerly listened to.  Finding it impossible to restrain herself any longer, she had seized the opportunity one evening when she and her son were sitting together in the salon, a rare occurrence for the doctor, and only possible when his patients were on the mend.