CHAPTER LVII.
Ada’s Escape.—The Magistrate.—Ada’s Ignorance of London Localities.—Learmont’s Fright.
When Ada sunk insensible into the arms of a stranger, after denouncing Jacob Gray as a murderer, she was conveyed into a shop by Charing-cross, when her rare and singular beauty, and the peculiar circumstances under which she had fainted, were the themes of every tongue. Such restoratives as upon the moment could be procured were immediately brought into requisition, and after a quarter of an hour she gently opened her eyes with a faint sigh and looked inquiringly about her.
Then she clasped her hands, and as she gazed upon the throng of curious, yet compassionate faces that surrounded her, she exclaimed,—
“What has happened? Oh, speak to me; where am I?”
“You have fainted,” cried four or five voices in a breath.
“Fainted—fainted?”
“Yes; I brought you in after you had called after the man as a murderer,” said the person who had caught Ada before she was brought into the shop.
For the space of about another minute then the young girl looked confused; after that a gush of recollections flashed across her mind, and the feeling that she was really at last free from Jacob Gray, came across her heart with so much happiness and joy, that covering her beautiful face with her small slender hands, she burst into tears and sobbed aloud in her fulness of heart.
Those who stood by seemed to feel that there was something sacred in the tears of the young thing before them, for they stood silent, and no one attempted to insult her by the usual commonplace remarks of vulgar consolation. There were tears in almost every eye, and when Ada withdrew her hands from her face, and a smile, beautiful as a sunbeam after an April shower, illumined her expressive countenance, it seemed as if some universal joy had been awakened in every breast, and murmured blessings upon her beauty, burst from several of the persons who had crowded, from motives of curiosity, into the shop.