"I've got five-and-twenty pounds with me, ma'am; saved out of my wages since I've been in your service; and I'm sure you're welcome to the money."
Jane had brought her little hoard with her, intending to invest some part of it in presents for her kindred—a shawl for her mother, and so on; but had been disappointed, by finding that the Parisian shops, brilliant as they were, contained very much the same things she had seen in London, and at higher prices. She had entertained a hazy notion that cashmere shawls were in some manner a product of the soil of France, and could be bought for a mere trifle; whereby she had been considerably taken aback when the proprietor of a plate-glass edifice on the Boulevard des Italiens asked her a thousand francs for a black cashmere, which she had set her mind upon as a suitable covering for the shoulders of Mrs. Target.
"You dear good girl!" said Clarissa, touched by this new proof of fidelity; "but if I should never be able to pay you the money!"
"Stuff and nonsense, ma'am! no fear of that; and if you weren't, I shouldn't care. Father and mother are comfortably off; and I'm not going to work for a pack of brothers and sisters. I gave the girls new bonnets last Easter, and sent them a ribbon apiece at Christmas; and that's enough for them. If you don't take the money, ma'am, I shall throw it in the fire."
Clarissa consented to accept the use of the money. She would be able to repay it, of course. She had a vague idea that she could earn money as a teacher of drawing in some remote continental city, where they might live very cheaply. How sweet it would be to work for her child! much sweeter than to be a millionaire's wife and dress him in purple and fine linen that cost her nothing.
She spent some hours in looking over and arranging her jewels. From all of these she selected only two half-hoop diamond rings, as a reserve against the hour of need. These and these only of Daniel Granger's gifts would she take with her. She made a list of her trinkets, with a nota bene stating her appropriation of the two rings, and laid it at the top of her principal jewel-case. After this, she wrote a letter to her husband—a few lines only, telling him how she had determined to take her child away with her, and how she should resist to the last gasp any attempt to rob her of him.
"If I were the guilty wretch you think me," she wrote, "I would willingly surrender my darling, rather than degrade him by any association with such a fallen creature. But whatever wrong I have committed against you—and that wrong was done by my marriage—I have not forfeited the right to my child's affection."
This letter written, there was nothing more to be done. Jane packed a travelling-bag with a few necessary items, and that was all the luggage they could venture to carry away with them.
The afternoon post brought a letter from Brussels, addressed to Miss Jane
Target, which the girl brought in triumph to her mistress.
"There'll be no bother about finding Mr. Austin, ma'am," she cried. "Here's a letter!"