HOW MONA RISES BETIMES—AND HOW SHE ENCOUNTERS A STRANGER AMIDST THE MORNING DEWS.
All through the night Mona scarcely shuts her eyes, so full is her mind of troubled and perplexing thoughts. At last her brain grows so tired that she cannot pursue any subject to its end, so she lies silently awake, watching for the coming of the tardy dawn.
At last, as she grows weary for wishing for it,—
"Morning fair
Comes forth with pilgrim steps in amice gray"
and light breaks through shutter and curtain, and objects pale and ghostly at first soon grow large and intimate.
"Brown night retires; young day pours in apace,
And opens all a lawny prospect wide."
Naturally an early riser, Mona slips noiselessly from her bed, lest she shall wake Geoffrey,—who is still sleeping the sleep of the just,—and, going into his dressing-room, jumps into his bath, leaving hers for him.
The general bath-room is to Geoffrey an abomination; nothing would induce him to enter it. His own bath, and nothing but his own bath, can content him. To have to make uncomfortable haste to be first, or else to await shivering the good pleasure of your next-door neighbor, is according to Mr. Rodney, a hardship too great for human endurance.
Having accomplished her toilet without the assistance of a maid (who would bore her to death), and without disturbing her lord and master, she leaves her room, and, softly descending the stairs, bids the maid in the hall below a "fair good-morning," and bears no malice in that the said maid is so appalled by her unexpected appearance that she forgets to give her back her greeting. She bestows her usual bonnie smile upon this stricken girl, and then, passing by her, opens the hall door, and sallies forth into the gray and early morning.
"The first low fluttering breath of waking day
Stirs the wide air. Thin clouds of pearly haze
Float slowly o'er the sky, to meet the rays
Of the unrisen sun."