They were members of
a home and conscript guard just formed, and when she left them
they had learned her errand.
Fortunately, Darby's illness took a better turn next day,
and by sunset he was free from delirium.
Things had not fared well over at Cove Mills's during these days
any more than at Mrs. Stanley's. Vashti was in a state of mind
which made her mother wonder if she were not going crazy.
She set it down to the storm she had been out in that evening,
for Vashti had not mentioned Darby's name. She kept his presence to herself,
thinking that -- thinking so many things that she could not speak or eat.
Her heart was like lead within her; but she could not rid herself
of the thought of Darby. She could have torn it out for hate of herself;
and to all her mother's questioning glances she turned the face of a sphinx.
For two days she neither ate nor spoke. She watched the opposite hill
through the rain which still kept up -- something was going on over there,
but what it was she could not tell. At last, on the evening of the third day,
she could stand it no longer, and she set out from home to learn something;
she could not have gone to Mrs. Stanley's, even if she had wished to do so;
for the bottom was still a sea extending from side to side,
and it was over her head in the current.
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