Miss Vaughan, why can't you play with these things as Miss Reynolds does?' she answered: 'Ah, Harris! what have I to do with these? I know what is coming.'
"'What is it?' I inquired.
"'Don't ask her, Miss Reynolds,' said Harris hastily; 'Miss Vaughan knows that she should not talk of these things.'
"'Oh, let me talk of them, and then I shall be more easy!' Evelyn answered. 'It is because I must not that I am so unhappy. Why have you put away my Bible and the other good books?'
"'Because your aunts and the doctors say you read them till you have made yourself quite melancholy, Miss Vaughan; and so they have been taken away, but not by me. I have not got them. You must not blame me for what others have done; you know my foolish fondness, and that I can deny you nothing in my power to grant.'
"We had two or three conversations of this kind; but Harris watched us so closely, that Miss Vaughan never had an opportunity of talking to me by ourselves; so that we never renewed, during those holidays, the subjects we had sometimes talked of at the Abbey.
"I stayed at that time about six weeks with Miss Vaughan; and as she appeared to be much better and more cheerful, I was sent back to school, with a promise from my governesses that, if Miss Vaughan desired it, I was to go to her again at the shortest notice.
"The spring that year was early, and some of the days in March were so fine, that the Mistresses Vaughan presumed to take their niece out in the coach without medical advice. Deeply and long did the old ladies lament their imprudence; but probably this affliction was the first which ever really caused them to feel.
"About six days after the last of these airings, the coach
came to the school, bringing a request that I should be sent back in it instantly.