Poor Dora Deane! The path she trod was dark, indeed, but there was light ahead, and even now it was breaking upon her though she knew it not.
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CHAPTER IX.
DORA AT ROSE HILL.
Summer was over. The glorious September days were gone. The hazy October had passed away, and the autumn winds had swept the withered leaves from the tall trees which grew around Rose Hill; when one cold, rainy November morning, a messenger was sent to Mrs. Deane, saying that Mrs. Hastings was sick, and wished to see her.
"Mrs. Hastings sent for mother! How funny! There must be some mistake," said Eugenia, putting her head in at the door. "Are you sure it was mother?"
"Yes, quite sure," answered the man. "Mrs. Hastings thought she would know what to do for the baby, which was born yesterday, and is a puny little thing."
This silenced Eugenia, who waited impatiently until nightfall, when her mother returned with a sad account of affairs at Rose Hill. Mrs. Hastings was sick and nervous, Mrs. Leah was lazy and cross, the servants ignorant and impertinent, the house was in disorder; while Mr. Hastings, with a cloud on his face, ill befitting a newly-made father, stalked up and down the sick-room, looking in vain for an empty chair, so filled were they with blankets, towels, baby's dresses, and the various kinds of work which Ella was always beginning and never finishing.
"Such an ignorant, helpless creature I never saw," said Mrs. Deane, "Why, she don't know anything—and such looking rooms! I don't wonder her servants give her so much trouble; but my heart ached for him, poor man, when I saw him putting away the things, and trying to make the room a little more comfortable."
It was even as Mrs. Deane had said. Ella, whose favorite theory was, "a big house, a lot of things, and chairs enough to put them in," was wholly unprepared for sickness, which found her in a sad condition. To be sure there were quantities of French embroidery, thread lace and fine linen, while the bed, on which she lay, cost a hundred dollars, and the rosewood crib was perfect of its kind, but there was a great lack of neatness and order; and as day after day Mr. Hastings stood with folded arms, looking first from one window and then from the other, his thoughts were far from being agreeable, save when he bent over the cradle of his first-born, and then there broke over his face a look of unutterable tenderness, which was succeeded by a shade of deep anxiety as his eye rested upon his frail young wife, whose face seemed whiter even than the pillow on which it lay.