After she had been reading, perhaps an hour, she dipped a pen into the standish on her escritoir, and began to write slowly, as if weighing every word as it dropped from her pen. Then she closed the book, locked it carefully, and securing it in the escritoir again, walked slowly toward her bed-chamber, which opened from the boudoir, evidently worn out and ready to drop down with exhaustion. A slight disturbance in the passion-vine betrayed that Agnes Barker had changed her position, and now commanded a view through the open door of Mabel's chamber. She saw the poor lady move wearily toward a bed, which stood like a snowdrift in the midst of the room, and pulling the cloud of white lace, which enveloped it aside, with her trembling hands, fell wearily down upon the pillows, and dropped away into tranquil slumber, like a child that had played itself to sleep in a daisy field.
Mabel had asked for strength, and God gave her its first tranquilizing element—rest.
Agnes stood motionless till the lace curtains above the sleeper closed again, leaving nothing visible upon the snowy white beneath but the calm, sleeping face of Mabel Harrington, gleaming as it were through a cloud, and the folds of her azure shawl, that lay around her like fragments of the blue sky. Mrs. Harrington had evidently sunk into a heavy slumber, but Agnes kept her concealment some time after this, for Fair-Star was still vigilant, and she shrunk from his glances as if they had been human.
But the dog crept into his mistress's chamber at last, and then Agnes Barker stole from her fragrant hiding-place, and entered the boudoir again.
The escritoir was closed, but Agnes saw with joy that the key still remained in its lock, and that Mrs. Harrington had left her watch upon a marble console close by. Stealing across the room, and holding her wicked breath, as if she felt that it would poison the air of that tranquil room, she crept to the escritoir, turned the key, and stealthily drawing forth the vellum book, dropped on one knee, while she reached forth her hand, drawing the watch softly to her lap.
There was a quiver in her hands as she unlocked that little golden heart, forcing it asunder with a jerk, for the dog came back just then, and stood regarding her with his clear, honest eyes. She strove to evade him, and gleams of angry shame stole across her cheeks as she laid down the watch, and stole, like the thief that she was, through the sash door, along the pretty labyrinth of flowers, and into another door that opened upon one end of the balcony.
And Mabel slept on, while this ruthless girl was tearing the secret from her life.
CHAPTER XIV.
RALPH'S LOVE DREAM.
It was an uncomfortable breakfast-table to which the Harringtons sat down that morning. The lady of the house and Lina, its morning-star, were both absent, and the servant, who stood at the coffee-urn ready to distribute its contents, was a most unsatisfactory substitute.