That night Mary Ellis’s couch remained unpressed, and the rising sun shone in at the window upon her glossy hair where she crouched down beside her bed.
It was a movement in the adjoining room which roused her from the heavy stupor into which she had fallen, for it could hardly be called a natural sleep, and she started up to look round as if feeling guilty of some lapse of duty.
For a few minutes she suffered from a strange feeling of confusion accompanied by depression. Then by degrees the incidents of the past night came clearly to her mind, and she recalled how she had sunk down by her bed to pray for help and patience, and that the terrible affliction might be lightened for him she loved, and then all had become blank.
A few minutes before Mary’s face had looked wan and pale, now it was suffused by a warm glow that was not that of the ruddy early morning sun. For the hope had risen strongly in her breast that, in spite of all, the terrible affliction would be lightened, and by her.
Chapter Seventeen.
Four days elapsed, and Mrs Ellis noticed a change in her child. Mary had been more than usually attentive to her father, and James Ellis had noticed and looked pleased.
“’Tis going off, mother,” he said one evening. “Of course it hit very hard at the time, poor little lass, for she felt very fond of him, I suppose; but I always said to myself that time would heal the sore place, and, bless her, it is doing it. You’ve noticed how much brighter she seems?”
“Yes, I’ve noticed,” said Mrs Ellis, nodding her head as she prepared the supper. “She was actually singing gently to herself this morning over her work, just as she used to, and you don’t know, James dear, what a lot of good it did me.”