Reflection following:—
“Miss Gwen must be in her bed by this! Wonder why she didn’t wake me up? Rang no bell? Surely I’d have heard it? If she did, and I haven’t answered—Well; the dear young lady’s just the sort not to make any ado about it. I suppose she thought I’d gone to my room, and didn’t wish to disturb me? But how could she think that? Besides, she must have passed through here, and seen me on the sofa!” The dressing-room is an ante-chamber of Miss Wynn’s sleeping apartment. “She mightn’t though,”—the contradiction suggested by the lamp burning low and dim,—“Still, it is strange, her not calling me, nor requiring my attendance?”
Gathering herself up, the girl stands for a while in cogitation. The result is a move across the carpeted floor in soft stealthy step, and an ear laid close to the keyhole of the bedchamber door.
“Sound asleep! I can’t go in now. Mustn’t—I daren’t awake her.”
Saying which the negligent attendant slips off to her own sleeping room, a flight higher; and in ten minutes after, is herself once more in the arms of Morpheus; this time retained in them till released, as already said, by the tolling of the stable clock.
Conscious of unpardonable remissness, she dresses in careless haste—any way, to be in time for attendance on her mistress, at morning toilet.
Her first move is to hurry down to the kitchen, get the can of hot water, and take it up to Miss Wynn’s sleeping room. Not to enter, but tap at the door and leave it.
She does the tapping; and, receiving no response nor summons from inside, concludes that the young lady is still asleep and not to be disturbed. It is a standing order of the house, and pleased to be precise in its observance—never more than on this morning—she sets down the painted can, and hurries back to the kitchen, soon after taking her seat by a breakfast table, unusually well spread, for the time to forget about her involuntary neglect of duty.
The first of the family proper, appearing down stairs is Eleanor Lees; she, too, much behind her accustomed time. Notwithstanding, she has to find occupation for nearly an hour before any of the others join her; and she endeavours to do this by perusing a newspaper which has come by the morning post.
With indifferent success. It is a Metropolitan daily, having but little in it to interest her, or indeed any one else; almost barren of news, as if its columns were blank. Three or four long-winded “leaders,” the impertinent outpourings of irresponsible anonymity; reports of Parliamentary speeches, four-fifths of them not worth reporting; chatter of sham statesmen, with their drivellings at public dinners; “Police intelligence,” in which there is half a column devoted to Daniel Driscoll, of the Seven Dials, how he blackened the eye of Bridget Sullivan, and bit off Pat Kavanagh’s ear, a crim. con. or two in all their prurience of detail; Court intelligence, with its odious plush and petty paltriness—this is the pabulum of a “London Daily” even the leading one supplies to its easily satisfied clientèle of readers! Scarce a word of the world’s news, scarce a word to tell of its real life and action—how beats the pulse, or thrills the heart of humanity! If there be anything in England half a century behind the age it is its Metropolitan Press—immeasurably inferior to the Provincial.