"Mr. Markham is up and has already gone out," said Marian, as she attended upon her lovely young patient. "He left word with Whittingham to tell me that he should come up, and see you on his return in half an hour."
"I would that this first interview were over, Marian," exclaimed Ellen.
"So you said, Miss, in the morning after your accouchement, when your father was coming up to see you; and yet all passed off well enough."
"Yes—but I felt that I blushed, and then grew deadly pale again, at least ten times in a minute," observed Ellen.
Marian said all she could to re-assure the young mother; and when the invalid had partaken of some tea, the kind-hearted servant left her, in order to attend to her own domestic duties down stairs.
Ellen than fell into a mournful reverie, during which she reviewed all the events of the last two years and a half of her life. She pondered upon the hideous poverty in which she and her father had been plunged in the court leading out of Golden Lane; she retrospected upon the strange services she had rendered the statuary, the artist, the sculptor, and the photographer; she thought of the old hag who had induced her to enter upon that career;—and then she fixed her thoughts upon Greenwood and her child.
She was thus mentally occupied when she heard footsteps ascending the staircase; and immediately afterwards some one knocked at her door.
In a faint voice she said, "Come in."
The door opened, and Richard Markham entered the apartment; but, as he crossed the threshold, he turned and said to some one who remained upon the landing, "Have the kindness to wait here one moment."
He then advanced towards the bed, and took the young lady's thin white hand.