“Then it isn’t good news,” said the sympathetic landlady, closely inspecting Eudora’s troubled face.
“It does not offer me a situation,” replied Eudora, evasively, and blushing deeply at the prevarication.
“Well, never mind, dear; you’ll have better fortune to-morrow, perhaps. And now I am not a-going to let you mope. You must go out and take a walk.”
Eudora thanked the landlady, but declined the proposition, and gently expressed her wish to be alone, whereupon the kind creature sighed and withdrew.
As soon as she found herself free from the watchfulness of her kind hostess, Eudora struck a match, burned her letter on the hearth, then threw herself into a chair, covered her face with her hands, and sank back in the stillness of a dumb despair.
While she sat thus the landlady suddenly broke in upon her in a state of great excitement, exclaiming:
“Oh, my dear Miss Miller, you must excuse me; but I couldn’t help coming to tell you, for I knew you would like to hear it—”
“What is it, Mrs. Corder?” Eudora languidly inquired.
“Why, that vile, wicked, infamous creature—that toad, that viper, that rattlesnake as poisoned all her good uncle’s family—have broke loose from the perlice and run away.”
“Indeed,” was the only answer that Eudora could utter forth. Her throat was choking, her heart was stopping, her blood freezing with terror.