“If you please, ma’am, master will not be home to-night, I’m certain sure of it. But you’ll sit up all the same. So please let me sit up with you till you gives it up.”
“As you like, Pina,” replied the young mistress.
And the little lady settled herself in one of the easy chairs before the fire, and the maid nestled down among the foot cushions in the corner.
In less than an hour, Pina, overcome with the heat of the fire and the heaviness of her own head, fell fast asleep.
And Drusilla watched on, almost as much alone as if her maid had been a hundred miles away—as very likely she was, in the spirit.
Drusilla was hoping against hope, that her too much loved husband might return home and in safety; but she could not justify this hope to her reason, for certainly this was a night in which no man in his senses, who valued his life and limbs, would take the road; and just as certainly, Alexander had a wholsome regard for his own; so it was not likely that he would risk them.
Still, Drusilla waited and watched until the clock struck twelve. Then, as her maid was snoring sonorously, to say nothing of baking her head by getting it almost into the fire, Drusilla woke her up and ordered her off to bed.
Pina, too utterly wearied with watching, and too stupid with sleep to make any resistance, stumbled off to her attic, finding her way as a somnambulist might.
And Drusilla was left quite alone. The clock struck two. And still she watched on and on. She thought there was little use in doing so, but she could not help it. She continued, at intervals, to stare through the windows, and to listen to every sound without, though she saw nothing but the darkness of the night, and the glimmer of the snow-clad, spectral looking trees, and heard nothing but the howling of the wind and the rattling of the icicles.
But suddenly, through all deeper sounds, she heard the merry ringing of sleigh-bells!