‘Pray speak freely to me, Miss,’ observed Celia; ‘though humble, you’ll not find me insincere.’
‘Celia,’ I remarked, ‘if you knew what a home, what parents I had left, you’d pity me.’
‘I do pity you, Miss,’ replied Celia, ‘indeed I do. Better days will come; you’ll be as happy as when you left them.’
I sighed, and shook my head with a look of despair, and then detailed to Celia the particulars of my flight from home, and the promises which the earl had made, but had hitherto failed to keep his word.
‘Be of good cheer, Miss, I pray,’ said Celia, ‘he will keep it, depend upon it.’
Celia spoke this with such a tone of confidence, that it forcibly struck me, and eagerly I exclaimed:—
‘Will he, Celia?—Now, don’t trifle with me—tell me the worst at once!—Better is present death, than hope deferred; still lingering on, still doomed to be deceived.’
‘My dearest young Mistress,’ returned Celia, ‘there is plenty of time before you think of dying; and, as a proof that the earl don’t mean to deceive you, look here.’
And with these words, Celia presented me with a miniature of the earl, elegantly set round with diamonds, at the same time, adding:—
‘On a chamber-maid’s penetration, this nothing more or less than an earnest of the original.’