"It is horrible, horrible!" she wailed. "If it were anything else, I think I could bear it, but this is so incredible, so unheard of. How am I to manage about our business matters? Will Mr. Carson believe me if I tell him the truth? Will he ever credit that the infant I show him is Augusta?" (Mr. Carson was the solicitor who managed the affairs of the Misses Semaphore.) "What about signing deeds and so forth? Then, if I pretend she has died, he will want to come to the funeral, or see the death certificate, or take out probate, or something of that kind that will involve enquiry. Oh! what, what am I to do?"
At last, exhausted by weeping, Miss Prudence lay still, and stared with sodden eyes at the flies dancing on the ceiling. The one agreeable object of her reflections was that at least she had got Augusta safely away, and placed her in hands that were both kind and safe.
A longing to see her sister came over her. Though Augusta was dumb and helpless, it would at least be some consolation to talk to her, to pour out her woes.
To a woman of the stamp of Prudence, the necessity for secretiveness, for independent
