“Pray for her, Florence,” she whispered, “for her strange manner terrifies me. If she would weep or accept my sympathy, I should have hope of its wearing off; as it is, I know not what to do or say, and I begin to dread the result.”
Florence essayed to comfort and cheer her; but it was with more sorrow than surprise that she learned on the following morning that Julia Denham had disappeared.
Her grieved cousin sought for her fruitlessly in all directions—inserted advertisements in the newspapers, and even enlisted the services of the detectives. But Julia had glided away in her ordinary costume, taking nothing in her hand that might lead to her identification, and was as thoroughly lost as if the earth had opened and received her.
CHAPTER VIII.
A NEW HOME.
It was a bright morning in the early spring when Florence Heriton, accompanied by her father, left the dull, dirty street in Brompton to pay her first visit to the busy and pleasantly situated market town of Kirton-on-the-Thames.
Mr. Heriton, clinging to his daughter’s arm for support and guidance, was childishly gratified by the prospect of a railway journey. He began to complain of the porter for putting him into a second-class carriage, but Florence slipping a daily paper into his hand, all other grievances were forgotten in an eager inspection of the state of the money market.
When they were fairly out of sight of the tall rows of houses, amid which she had been so long immured, Florence began to breathe more freely, and her spirits to recover their natural elasticity. Work would not seem so toilsome, privations so hard to endure, when the green fields and trees were once more around her; and when they alighted at the Kirton Station, and her father began to complain of the length of the walk that followed, her smiles and merry sallies wiled him into forgetfulness of his fatigue.
Near the summit of a gentle acclivity, some two miles from the town, stood the cottage to which Susan Denham had directed them. It was close to the highroad, but no other habitation stood within some considerable distance, and a fine clump of elm trees growing in an adjacent field sheltered it from the shrill blasts of the northerly wind. It was a most unpretending building, but the ivy that had crept over the front and side, twining its tendrils even around the old brick chimney, gave it an air of comfort; and the lozenge-shaped panes of the little casements shone brightly in the morning sun.
But what most attracted the eyes of Florence were the trimly kept beds in the small forecourt or garden. Early as it was, they were gay with the gayest of spring flowers. The crocus, in its every variety of hue, from orange purple and to the palest of blue, sprang up everywhere; large clusters of snowdrops, mingled with hepaticas and early tulips; and the air was redolent with the perfume of the white and blue violets which peeped from every sheltered corner.