"Fought?" cried the girl, eagerly; "I hope he has punished him, them."
"Which do you mean?" asked Arabella, with a sad smile.
"Oh, the tall one, with the clear open brow and gentle look," replied the girl. "The other was so insolent and rude, I could have struck him on the spot, if I had been a man."
Arabella shook her head sadly. "All do not judge as you do, Ida Mara," she replied. "Would that they did; the one who gave the offence has escaped with a wound, which perhaps may be but a scratch; the other is banished from the realm."
Ida clasped her hands vehemently over her eyes, exclaiming, "This is man's justice!--When will it come to an end?"
Arabella cast herself into a chair, and mused for a minute or two. Her tears flowed as she thought; but at length wiping them away, she said, "Perhaps it is better. God knows how it would have ended.--Come, Ida Mara, sit down here upon this stool beside me, and let me hear your tale from your own lips. Sir Harry West has told me something of it; but I would hear more."
The girl obeyed; and sitting down at her mistress's feet, and raising her large Italian eyes to the lady's countenance, she told her little history in plain and simple language, which carried the conviction of truth along with it.
To that tale, as the reader knows it, we have little if anything to add. She recounted how miserable she had been in her own home after her mother's death, and her father's marriage to another wife; how she felt even a sort of relief when he sold her to the old English traveller; how she thought it would be a happy and a tranquil life merely to sing as she had been accustomed, and to play upon her lute; and how she soon found that it was full of sorrow, and insult, and discomfort. She told the lady, too, that when her wanderings began, the man Weston was accompanied by his wife, a very shrew, who ruled him with a rod of iron, and whenever he proved the least refractory, threatened to disclose some secrets of which she seemed to have gained possession. This always had the effect of cowing him completely; but his wife had died in London, the girl said, some two months before. After this woman's death, whom Ida Mara represented as little less wicked than her husband, he sought to take advantage of the poor girl's unprotected state, not only for the gratification of his own passions, but for the purposes of gain.
"I must not say," continued Ida Mara, "all that I think he wanted me to do, for his words were dark and doubtful; but this I know, lady, that, unless the misery of life was so great that I wished it speedily to end, I would not eat of food which his hand had come near, nor drink of a cup that had been within his reach, for the world."
Arabella smiled incredulously. "Those are your Italian notions," she said; "we never hear of such things in England, Ida Mara. But now you are safe from him, and may banish fear; and if you show yourself a good girl, and are faithful to me, you shall never want a friend and a protector as long as I live."