Meg smiled at the shimmer of the stones. "I'll look in and see you asleep," he told her, and kissed her very tenderly as he left; but he did not look in again. Another scene was more than he could stand, and his sister advised him not to.
Meg fell asleep at last with the miniature in her hand, but woke in the middle of the night with a terrified consciousness that some one was bending over her, and feeling stealthily under her pillow.
"It's Lazarus! Father, father!" she screamed, but the figure fled incontinently—and in the morning Meg's diamonds were gone. She never spoke of her loss: like many a nervous child she could not bear to talk of nightly terrors; but for years she was haunted with the idea of that gaunt hungry figure "just outside," who might creep again into her room and stand by her with freezing hands and frost-bitten feet,—a sort of embodied and revengeful poverty.
Nursery days ended under the new régime, and the pretty spoilt baby developed into a shy little schoolroom girl, who curtsied demurely, and spoke in a whisper when she appeared with her sisters in the drawing-room, for a terrible half-hour before dinner.
The girls had their meals in the schoolroom at the top of the house, with Miss Cripps, who, poor thing, had a dull enough time of it; and their world was quite distinct from their aunt's as a rule, though she occasionally invaded it, very much to their dismay.
Mrs. Russelthorpe had no intention of treating her nieces unfairly, and no money was spared over their education; if little love was lavished on them they certainly never expected, and probably never consciously missed it.
Laura and Kate held together with a close and exclusive alliance; and little Meg, who was rather "out of it" so far as her sisters were concerned, would nurse her doll in a corner, and wear the pink off its cheeks with her kisses.
Laura was a sturdy broad-shouldered girl, with a square jaw and clear blue eyes. She was abnormally solemn in the drawing-room, as indeed they all were, but possessed a fund of dry humour that would bubble up suddenly and quaintly even in schoolroom days, and a philosophical self-reliance that unfortunately had a tendency to degenerate into selfishness.
Kate was graceful and delicate. She had languid and rather plaintive manners, and gave promise of unusual beauty. She was lazy and apparently yielding, though, as a matter of fact, she possessed a gentle tenacity of purpose that seldom readily gave way to anything; but none of the Deanes were wanting in obstinacy.
One unhappy day Aunt Russelthorpe made a sudden descent on the schoolroom. She had a habit of bursting in at irregular intervals in order to see how things were going: for she never quite trusted any governess, and was genuinely determined to do her duty by the girls. Her advent was generally a prelude to storms.