“I thought I heard you moving about, Miss Manners.”
“So I was. I felt restless and could not sleep. I am very tired with my journey, I suppose, and the room is strange to me. Come here—give me your hand.”
“You are not afraid, my dear child?” said Olive, remembering that she was, indeed, little more than a child, though she looked so womanly. “You are not frightening yourself in this gloomy old house, nor thinking of ghosts and goblins?”
“No—no! I was thinking, if I must tell the truth,” said the girl, with something very like a suppressed sob—“I was thinking of you and your mother, as I saw you standing when I first came in. No one ever clasped me so, or ever will! Not that I have any one to blame; my father and mother died; they could not help dying. But if they had just brought me into the world and left me, as I have heard some parents have done, then I should cry out, 'Wicked parents! if I grow up heartless, because I have no one to love me; and vile, because I have none to guide me,—my sin be upon your head!'”
She said these words with vehement passion. But Olive answered calmy, “Hush, Christal!—let me call you Christal; for I am much older than you. Lie down and rest. Be loving, and you will never want for love; be humble, and you will never want for guiding. You have good friends here, who will care for you very much, I doubt not. Be content, my poor, tired child!”
She spoke very softly; for the darkness quite obliterated the vision of that stylish damsel who had exhibited her airs and graces in the drawing-room. As she sat by Christal's bedside, Olive only felt the presence of a desolate orphan.
She said in her heart, “Please God, I will do her all the good that lies in my feeble power. Who knows but that, in some way or other, I may comfort and help this child!” So she stooped down and kissed Christal on the forehead, a tenderness that the girl passionately returned. Then Olive went and lay down by her blind mother's side, with a quiet and a happy heart.
CHAPTER XXV.
In a week's time Christal Manners was fairly domiciled at Woodford Cottage. In what capacity it would be hard to say—certainly not as Miss Vanbrugh's protégée—for she assumed toward the little old maid a most benignant air of superiority. Mr. Vanbrugh she privately christened “the old Ogre,” and kept as much out of his way as possible. This was not difficult, for the artist was too much wrapped up in himself to meddle with any domestic affairs. He seemed to be under some mystification that the lively French girl was a guest of Miss Rothesay's, and his sister ventured not to break this delusion. Christal's surname created no suspicions; the very name of his former model, Celia Manners, had long since passed from his memory.