Laura, half asleep still, with her hands under her cheek, lay staring in a vague pleasure at the castle and the forest. "Enchanted casements"—"perilous seas"—"in fairy lands forlorn." The lines ran sleepily, a little jumbled, in her memory.
But gradually the morning and the freshness worked; and her spirits, emerging from their half-dream, began to dance within her. When she sprang up to throw the window wide, there below her was the sparkling river, the daffodils waving their pale heads in the delicate Westmoreland grass, the high white clouds still racing before the wind. How heavenly to find oneself in this wild clean country!—after all the ugly squalors of parade and lodging-house, after the dingy bow-windowed streets with the March dust whirling through them.
She leant across the broad window-sill, her chin on her hands, absorbed, drinking it in. The eastern sun, coming slanting-ways, bathed her tumbled masses of fair hair, her little white form, her bare feet raised tiptoe.
Suddenly she drew back. She had seen the figure of a man crossing the park on the further side of the river, and the maidenly instinct drove her from the window; though the man in question was perhaps a quarter of a mile away, and had he been looking for her, could not possibly have made out more than a pale speck on the old wall.
"Mr. Helbeck,"—she thought—"by the height of him. Where is he off to before seven o'clock in the morning? I hate a man that can't keep rational hours like other people! Fricka, come here!"
For her little dog, who had sprung from the bed after its mistress, was now stretching and blinking behind her. At Laura's voice it jumped up and tried to lick her face. Laura caught it in her arms and sat down on the bed, still hugging it.
"No, Fricka, I don't like him—I don't, I don't, I don't! But you and I have just got to behave. If you annoy that big dog downstairs, he'll break your neck,—he will, Fricka. As for me,"—she shrugged her small shoulders,—"well, Mr. Helbeck can't break my neck, so I'm dreadfully afraid I shall annoy him—dreadfully, dreadfully afraid! But I'll try not. You see, what we've got to do, is just to get Augustina well—stand over her with a broomstick and pour the tonics down her throat. Then, Fricka, we'll go our way and have some fun. Now look at us!——"
She moved a little, so that the cracked glass on the dressing-table reflected her head and shoulders, with the dog against her neck.
"You know we're not at all bad-looking, Fricka—neither of us. I've seen much worse. (Oh, Fricka! I've told you scores of times I can wash my face—without you—thank you!) There's all sorts of nice things that might happen if we just put ourselves in the way of them. Oh! I do want some fun—I do!—at least sometimes!"
But again the voice dropped suddenly; the big greenish eyes filled in a moment with inconsistent tears, and Laura sat staring at the sunshine, while the drops fell on her white nightgown.