“And let me, for your own sake, recommend you to behave more respectfully when you find another place.”
What she was doing lady Ann was incapable of knowing. A woman love-brooding over a child is at the gate of heaven; to take her child from her is to turn her away from more than paradise.
Jane went in silence, seeming to accept the inevitable, too proud to wipe away the tear whose rising she could not help—a tear not for herself, nor yet for the child, but for the dead mother in whose place she left such a woman. She walked slowly back to the nursery, where her charge was asleep, closed the door, sat down by the cot, and sat for a while without moving. Then her countenance began to change, and slowly went on changing, until at last, as through a mist of troubled emotion, out upon the strong, rugged face broke, with strange suggestion of a sunset, the glow of resolve and justified desire. A maid more friendly than the rest brought her some tea, but Jane said nothing of what had occurred. When the child awoke, she fed him, and played with him a long time—till he was thoroughly tired, when she undressed him, and laying him down, set about preparing his evening meal. No one could have perceived in her any difference, except indeed it were a subdued excitement in her glowing eyes. When it was ready, she went to her box, took from it a small bottle, and poured a few dark-coloured drops into the food.
“God forgive me! it's but this once!” she murmured.
The child seemed not quite to relish his supper, but did not refuse it, and was presently asleep in her arms. She laid him down, took a book, and began to read.
CHAPTER III. THE FLIGHT.
She read until every sound had died in the house, every sound from garret to cellar, except the ticking of clock, and the tinkling cracks of sinking fires and cooling grates. In the regnant silence she rose, laid aside her book, softly opened the door, and stepped as softly into the narrow passage. A moment or two she listened, then stole on tiptoe to the main corridor, and again listened. She went next to the head of the great stair, and once more stood and listened. Then she crept down to the drawing-room, saw that there was no light in the library, billiard-room, or smoking-room, and with stealthy feet returned to the nursery. There she closed the door she had left open, and took the child. He lay in her arms like one dead. She removed everything he wore, and dressed him in the garments which for the last fortnight she had been making for him from clothes of her own. When she had done, he looked like any cottager's child; there was nothing in his face to contradict his attire. She regarded the result for a moment with a triumph of satisfaction, laid him down, and proceeded to put away the clothes he had worn.
Over the top of the door was a small cupboard in the wall, into which she had never looked until the day before, when she opened it and found it empty. She placed a table under it, and a chair on the table, climbed up, laid in it everything she had taken off the child, locked the door of it, put the key in her pocket, and got down. Then she took the cloak and hood he had hitherto worn out of doors, laid them down beside the wardrobe, and lifting the end of it with a strength worthy of the blacksmith's daughter, pushed them with her foot into the hollow between the bottom of the wardrobe and the floor of the room. This done, she looked at the timepiece on the mantelshelf, saw it was one o'clock, and sat down to recover her breath. But the next moment she was on her knees, sobbing. By and by she rose, wiped the hot tears from her eyes, and went carefully about the room, gathering up this and that, and putting it into her box. Then having locked it, she stuffed a number of small pieces of paper into the lock, using a crochet-needle to get them well among the wards. Lastly, she put on a dress she had never worn at Mortgrange, took up the child, who was still in a dead sleep, wrapped him in an old shawl, and stole with him from the room.
Like those of a thief—or murderess rather, her scared eyes looked on this side and that, as she crept to a narrow stair that led to the kitchen. She knew every turn and every opening in this part of the house: for weeks she had been occupied, both intellect and imagination, with the daring idea she was now carrying into effect.