"No, Barbara; Frank did not go with her, or even see her when in Camden.
He is not quite so bad as that, I hope."
The mother nature was in the ascendant, and for a moment resented the
suspicion against her son, even though that suspicion had been in her
own mind when Frank returned from Camden with the news of Ethie's
flight. That he had had something to do with it was her first fear,
until convinced to the contrary; and now she blamed Aunt Barbara for
harboring the same thought. As soon as possible she told all she had
heard from Frank, and then went on with her invectives against the
Markhams generally, and Richard in particular, and her endless surmises
as to where Ethelyn had gone, and what was the final cause of her going.
For a time Aunt Barbara turned a deaf ear to what she was saying,
thinking only of Ethie, gone; Ethie, driven to such strait, that she
must either run away or die; Ethie, the little brown-eyed, rosy-cheeked,
willful, imperious girl, whom she loved so much for the very willful
imperiousness which always went hand in hand with such pretty fits of
penitence, and sorrow, and remorse for the misdeed, that not to love her
was impossible.
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