"I understand all about it," said her aunt, "and I shall tell your father what I think if he alludes to the matter. In the meantime you had better go to sleep, and wake up fresh and bright in the morning. Good-night, my dear."
And Lesley was left to her own reflections.
Although she went early to bed she did not sleep soon or soundly. There was not much traffic along the street in which her father lived, but the bells of St. Pancras rang out the hours and the quarters with painful tunelessness, and an occasional rumble of wheels would startle her into wakeful terror. At half-past two in the morning she heard the opening and shutting of the front door, and her father's footsteps on the stairs as he came up to bed. There seemed to her something uncanny in these nocturnal habits. The life of a journalist, of a literary man, of anybody who did any definite work in the world at all, was quite unknown to her.
She came down to breakfast at nine o'clock, feeling weary and depressed. Miss Brooke was kind but preoccupied; she had a committee at twelve, she said, and another at four, so she would be obliged to leave Lesley for the greater part of the day. "But you will have your own little arrangements to make you know," she said, "and Sarah will show you or tell you anything you want. You might as well fall into our ways as soon as you can."
"Oh, yes," said Lesley. "I only want to be no trouble."
"You'll be no trouble to anybody," said Miss Brooke, cheerfully, "so long as you find something to do, and do it. There's a good library of books in the house, and a piano in the drawing-room; and you ought to go out for an hour or two every day. I daresay you will be able to occupy yourself."
"Is there any one to go out with me?" queried Lesley, timidly. She had never been out alone in the whole course of her life.
"Go out with you?" repeated Miss Brooke, rather rudely, though with kind intent. "An able-bodied young woman of eighteen or nineteen surely can take care of herself! You are not in Paris now, my dear, you are in London; and girls in London have to be independent and courageous."
Lesley felt that she was being somewhat unjustly judged, but she did not like to reply. And her aunt, conscious of having spoken sharply, became immediately more gentle in manner, and told her certain details about the arrangements of the house, which it behoved Lesley to know, with considerable thoughtfulness and kind feeling.
Mr. Brooke usually rang for his coffee about half-past ten, and came down at half-past eleven. He then had breakfast served to him in the dining-room, and did not join his sister at luncheon at all. In the afternoon he walked out, or wrote, or saw friends; dined at six, and went down to the office of his paper at eight. From the office he did not usually return until the small hours of the morning; and then, as Miss Brooke explained, he often sat up writing or reading for an hour or two longer.