She unchained, unbolted, and unlocked the side-door.
"At last!" It was Aunt Harriet's voice, exacerbated.
"What!
You, sister?
You're soon up.
What a blessing!"
The two majestic and imposing creatures met on the mat, craning forward so that their lips might meet above their terrific bosoms.
"What's the matter?" Mrs. Baines asked, fearfully.
"Well, I do declare!" said Mrs. Maddack.
"And I've driven specially over to ask you!"
"Where's Sophia?" demanded Mrs. Baines.
"You don't mean to say she's not come, sister?" Mrs. Maddack sank down on to the sofa.
"Come?" Mrs. Baines repeated.
"Of course she's not come!
What do you mean, sister?"
"The very moment she got Constance's letter yesterday, saying you were ill in bed and she'd better come over to help in the shop, she started.
I got Bratt's dog-cart for her."
Mrs. Baines in her turn also sank down on to the sofa.
"I've not been ill," she said. "And Constance hasn't written for a week!
Only yesterday I was telling her--"
"Sister--it can't be!
Sophia had letters from Constance every morning.
At least she said they were from Constance.
I told her to be sure and write me how you were last night, and she promised faithfully she would.
And it was because I got nothing by this morning's post that I decided to come over myself, to see if it was anything serious."
"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.