She dashed into her cousin's room, and looked at the very small shelf where stood the slender stock of Muriel's literary possessions.
Nothing. A large Children's Bible with illustrations was the nearest approach to a work of devotion, and even in such an extremity was not to be regarded in the light of a possible companion for church.
Zella, in despair, wondered for an insane moment whether she could pretend sudden illness and declare herself unable to leave the house at all, but even as the idea crossed her mind she rejected it.
Rushing aimlessly back into her own room, she was horrified to see from the window her Aunt Marianne hastening up the drive towards the house.
Zella flew down the stairs and out at the door.
As she reached Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had relievedly turned back at the sight of her, Zella thrust both empty hands into her muff.
"I'm so sorry," she gasped breathlessly; "I've been ages."
"We shall be late," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, hurrying rapidly down the drive. "I particularly started early, as it is your first Sunday here, and I ani not at all anxious to walk into church in deep mourning with everybody looking on. It was very careless of you, Zella, and irreverent too, dear, though I dare say you didn't quite realize that."
"No," said Zella faintly, with a growing hope that she might yet escape any further reference to the absent Prayer-Book.
"You see," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, speaking almost in snatches as she hastened along the muddy road, " to be late for church is an irreverence, dear. I know that a great many people are very careless, and gentlemen especially don't always quite realize. Perhaps you've not been accustomed to thinking very much about these things, but one wouldn't care to arrive late at the house of a friend, would one? So how much worse—take care of that puddle, dear—to be late at the house of God, which is what one may well call the church. You see what Aunt Marianne means, don't you?"
"Yes."
"We will say no more about it, dear, only let it make you more thoughtful."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans paused a moment, both to regain breath and to let the necessity for thoughtfulness sink in, before modulating the conversation into a lighter key.
"Couldn't you find the Prayer-Book, that you were so long fetching it? I always think that things seem to lose themselves when one is in a hurry."
Conscious of the emptiness of the hands within her muff, Zella said, with an inspiration born of despair:
"Aunt Marianne, I—I am afraid I've not got it, after all. I simply couldn't find it anywhere."
"Couldn't find your Prayer-Book?"
"No."
"When did you last use it?" said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, suddenly suspicious.
"I can't remember," said Zella, with a sense of being trapped.. Her confusion was patent and she was on the verge of tears.
"Did you use it last Sunday?"
"No; don't you remember I didn't go to church?" said Zella, relieved at having found what she supposed to be so unanswerable a reply. But her relief was short-lived.
"I should have thought," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans in a low tone of condemnation that made Zella feel acutely shamed—" I should have thought one would want to follow the service quietly at home, when one was kept from church for such a reason as yours, Zella."
Zella struggled with herself not to burst into tears.
As they neared the church, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans said rapidly:
Aunt Marianne knows what it is, dear. You forgot to bring your Prayer-Book from Villetswood, and were ashamed to say so; so you have been all these days without it, hoping that no one would find it out. It was very naughty and artful indeed, and it must have been God who arranged that Aunt Marianne should find out all about it. Go straight into church, dear—the second pew on the left hand side at the top. Aunt Marianne is not at all pleased with you."
Zella, who had previously thought with some self-complacency of her first entry into church, a slender figure attracting much pitying interest in her deep mourning, went up the aisle with a burning face, and feeling as though she must either choke or burst into sobs.
Unable to do either, she sat and stood and knelt through the service, not heeding a word of it, looking fixedly at the floor and pinching the back of her own hand as hard as she could, to keep back her tears, and feeling certain that the eyes of the clergyman and of all the congregation were fixed upon her Prayer-Book-less condition.
On leaving the church, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans began to speak to her husband in a low voice, and they moved on ahead with James; while Zella, though certain that Aunt Marianne could be telling him nothing but the dreadful explanation of why she had arrived so late, was thankful to dawdle behind with Muriel, whose boots were now doing their best to spoil Sunday for their wearer.
It was not until after tea that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans called Zella into the drawing-room. The child had spent the afternoon in a sick agony of shame and apprehension that would hardly have been justified if she had been about to be tried for her life.
Aunt Marianne, grave but gentle, made her sit down upon a sofa under the shadow of the In Memorial table. It was the corner consecrated to the Sunday talks to which James had taken exception.
"My poor child!" said Aunt Marianne, "have you been thinking what a dreadful thing it is not to be quite open and truthful—and especially about such a thing as a Prayer-Book?"
She took her niece's hand in hers as she spoke, and the kindness made the thoroughly overwrought Zella burst into tears.
"There, don't cry, dear. Aunt Marianne quite sees that you are sorry, but such a tendency must be fought against very seriously. It's very dreadful to be artful, but we can all cure ourselves of our faults if we like, and Aunt Marianne will help you."
"I didn't mean," sobbed Zella resentfully.
"Hush, dear! don't say that, because it's not quite true. You see, by running in to fetch the Prayer-Book when you knew it wasn't there, you were deceiving Aunt Marianne, or trying to. So it was acting a lie, if it wasn't actually telling one."
Zella, utterly bewildered and conscious of guilt somewhere, was also conscious of misunderstanding, but it seemed useless to try and explain.
Aunt Marianne was still speaking, with soft, relentless fluency:
"There is a little saying about a half-truth being ever the worst of lies. So you see that it doesn't make it any better to make excuses. You must think about it a great deal, dear, and say a little prayer every night that you may have the courage to be truthful. It would have made your dear, dear mother very sad to think that her little daughter could say what was not true— and only such a short time after losing her."
The appositeness of this conclusion struck Zella with a renewed sense of her guilt—heartless, deceitful, and disloyal to the memory of her mother, who, as Aunt Marianne had often said, was always watching over her little daughter from the skies.
"Now don't cry any more, dear, but think it over," her aunt concluded. "Go upstairs now, and send James and Muriel to me. I thought you'd rather have your little talk with Aunt Marianne quite alone, but I must not rob them of their Sunday half-hour. Jimmy's last Sunday," she added with a sigh.
Zella crept upstairs and gave the message to Muriel with averted, tear-stained face. James was nowhere to be seen.
Then she rushed to her own room and threw herself on the bed in a renewed agony of tears. At first she said to herself between her sobs: "I'm not artful—I'm not deceitful; it's unjust." But afterwards she thought: "It's no use—I did tell lies! though not the one Aunt Marianne thought. I am a liar—James would despise me if he knew. And the worst of it was that it was all no use."
VI