“Yes, go.”
“Good night, ma’am, please; and I hope the Lord will take care of you.”
“I do not doubt that He will, Pina. Good night.”
And so the girl retired.
And Drusilla was left quite alone, not only in the room but in the house. At first she felt very desolate and depressed and inclined to cry. But presently she reasoned with herself:
“That timid girl was really no protection. I am quite as safe without her as with her. I must trust in the Lord without whom ‘the watchman watcheth in vain.’ One of our wisest sages said, to become heroic, we must be sure to do that which we most fear to do. And I suppose his words must be received in their spirit rather than in the letter. I fear to jump into the fire, and I will not do so. And I fear, oh, how I fear, to stay in this house alone to-night! And all the more because I fear to do it, I will do it, rather than break up my husband’s arrangements by calling Leo from the stables to guard me, and rather than torture that poor cowardly girl by making her stay here to keep me company. But I will not touch De Quincey’s or Mrs. Crowe’s works to-night to add to my morbid terrors. I will read the book of comfort.”
And so saying, Drusilla took the Bible from its stand, and opened at the Psalms of David, those inspired outpourings of the soul, that have consoled and strengthened—how many millions of suffering and fainting hearts, for how many thousand years!
We must now leave Drusilla to meet the events of the night, and we must turn to Alexander, and relate the circumstances that had kept him away from his home these three days past—circumstances more ominous of evil to his gentle wife than anything which had as yet happened at Cedarwood.
CHAPTER XXV.
CAUGHT.
There’s danger in that dazzling eye,