“And we will share the waiting and suspense together; it will be easier than for either alone. But if you have found it hard to endure for one year, what do you suppose the ten that I have waited and watched have been to me?”
Many, many times in the next two years, while looking, longing, hoping even against hope for the finding of her mother and the coming of Espy, Ethel’s heart repeated that cry, “Oh, this weary, weary waiting, this torturing suspense! it is hard, hard to bear!”
Two years, and no word of or from either. Two years of freedom from poverty with all its attendant ills. Two years of abounding wealth.
But poverty is not the greatest of evils, nor do riches always bring happiness. Ethel’s life during this time had had other trials besides the absence of those loved ones, and the uncertainty in regard to their well-being and their return to her.
Her days, and often her nights also, were spent in attendance upon her aunt, whose ailments seemed to increase, and who grew more and more querulous, unreasonable, and exacting.
Ethel bore it all very patiently, seldom appearing other than cheerful and content in her aunt’s presence, though sometimes giving way to sadness and letting fall a few tears in the privacy of her own apartments.
There was a sad, aching void in the poor hungry heart which the Madame’s capricious, selfish affection could not fill. A hunger of the mind, too, for other and better intellectual food than the novels she was daily called upon to read aloud for the Madame’s delectation.
But, as says an old writer, “Young trees root all the faster for shaking,” and the young girl’s character deepened and strengthened under the trying but salutary discipline.
She was developing into a noble, well-poised woman, soft in manner, energetic in action, unworldly and unselfish to a remarkable degree. And making diligent use of the scraps of time she could secure to herself, she was accomplishing far more than she realized in the direction of mental culture.
On a bright, warm day in the latter part of April, 1876, Ethel sat in her boudoir looking over the morning paper. As usual, the advertisements claimed her first attention; for who could say that Espy and her mother might not be searching for her in the same way in which she was pursuing her quest for the latter?