It was a rough and ready mode of proceeding, but it proved effectual. Margaret opened her eyes and looked round her, perfectly bewildered at her position. Jane Rodgers's hard face was the first object that met her gaze; feeling round her, she discovered that water was dripping from her face and hair.
She tried to rise. "Where am I?" she said faintly.
"Lie still," replied Jane authoritatively, holding her down with that vice-like grasp which is so irritating to the weak. "You've been and fainted," she continued sullenly—"Goodness knows for why—and frightening the very breath out of my body; but if this kind of thing is to go on, you must find some other place, or else get a woman in. I've too much to do in the house to be giving my time continual to nurse-tending."
The rude speech was almost lost upon Margaret, for memory was awaking from its sleep; the events of the day were returning gradually to her mind. "Yes," she said slowly; "I remember now. I suppose I fainted." Then rising to a sitting posture she fixed her large eyes on her servant's face.
The face was so white in its strange chiselled beauty, the eyes were so wild and mournful, that for the moment Jane's superstitious fears returned.
"Lor!" she said hastily, "don't look at a body like that, there's a dear. Come—Miss Laura'll come back, never you fear. Children isn't lost in that way."
"Where is Miss Laura gone?" Margaret's voice was very low, her eyes were still fixed on her servant's face.
Jane placed the candle on the table and turned aside to pull down the window-blind and arrange the curtains. "I'll tell you all about it," she said soothingly, "if you'll lie down quiet. Miss Laura, she came in alone, and I give her her dinner; after dinner she sits down with her picture-book. Presently a gentleman came in at the garden-gate; I, as it might be in the kitchen, see Miss Laura, from the window, a running out, quite pleased like to meet him. Them two go into the sitting-room, and then Miss Laura, she come running down into the kitchen. 'Jane,' she says, 'my hat, quick; it's my papa, and we're going to meet mamma on the sands,' Miss Laura, as your orders is, mustn't never be contradicted, so I get her hat, and off they go together through the garden-gate. I see them walk along the sands, and thinks I to myself, 'I'll get tea ready, for they'll find missis, and all come in together.' So now you know as much as I do, for Miss Laura ain't come back all the afternoon."
As Jane spoke she turned her face, which expressed nothing but conscious virtue, to her mistress. Margaret was writhing on the bed as if she had been suffering from some keen physical pain.
"What was he like—this gentleman who came in I mean?" she asked in a low, weak voice. A last hope, a very faint one, was struggling with her misery.