“Serious it is!” murmured Mrs. Baines.

“What—­”

“Sophia’s run off.  That’s the plain English of it!” said Mrs. Baines with frigid calm.

“Nay!  That I’ll never believe.  I’ve looked after Sophia night and day as if she was my own, and—­”

“If she hasn’t run off, where is she?”

Mrs. Maddack opened the door with a tragic gesture.

“Bladen,” she called in a loud voice to the driver of the waggonette, who was standing on the pavement.

“Yes’m.”

“It was Pember drove Miss Sophia yesterday, wasn’t it?”

“Yes’m.”

She hesitated.  A clumsy question might enlighten a member of the class which ought never to be enlightened about one’s private affairs.

“He didn’t come all the way here?”

“No’m.  He happened to say last night when he got back as Miss Sophia had told him to set her down at Knype Station.”

“I thought so!” said Mrs. Maddack, courageously.

“Yes’m.”

“Sister!” she moaned, after carefully shutting the door.

They clung to each other.

The horror of what had occurred did not instantly take full possession of them, because the power of credence, of imaginatively realizing a supreme event, whether of great grief or of great happiness, is ridiculously finite.  But every minute the horror grew more clear, more intense, more tragically dominant over them.  There were many things that they could not say to each other,—­from pride, from shame, from the inadequacy of words.  Neither could utter the name of Gerald Scales.  And Aunt Harriet could not stoop to defend herself from a possible charge of neglect; nor could Mrs. Baines stoop to assure her sister that she was incapable of preferring such a charge.  And the sheer, immense criminal folly of Sophia could not even be referred to:  it was unspeakable.  So the interview proceeded, lamely, clumsily, inconsequently, leading to naught.

Sophia was gone.  She was gone with Gerald Scales.

That beautiful child, that incalculable, untamable, impossible creature, had committed the final folly; without pretext or excuse, and with what elaborate deceit!  Yes, without excuse!  She had not been treated harshly; she had had a degree of liberty which would have astounded and shocked her grandmothers; she had been petted, humoured, spoilt.  And her answer was to disgrace the family by an act as irrevocable as it was utterly vicious.  If among her desires was the desire to humiliate those majesties, her mother and Aunt Harriet, she would have been content could she have seen them on the sofa there, humbled, shamed, mortally wounded!  Ah, the monstrous Chinese cruelty of youth!