’Tis but a peevish boy;—yet he talks well:—
But what care I for words? yet words do well,
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
It is a pretty youth;—not very pretty:—
But, sure, he’s proud; and yet his pride becomes him.
Shakspere.
When Helen Grahame opened her eyes, after a somewhat protracted sleep, she looked around her for a minute in unutterable surprise. The morning previously, she had awakened in an agony of sorrow, it is true, but to look upon all the luxurious refinements and comforts which are to be met with in the sleeping chambers of the wealthy alone. Now she beheld herself in a small sitting-room; the bed appointments being evidently supplemental, and not fitly pertaining to the room. Clean they were, but vastly inferior in material and pattern to what she had been accustomed.
A fire was burning clearly in the small grate, and a kettle, steaming and singing cheerfully, stood upon the hob. Upon a table, at the foot of the bed, was spread the breakfast appurtenances; and at the window sat a young girl plying her needle with a rapidity and skill something magical in its character.
A moment more, and Helen Grahame realised her position.
She remembered her terrible conversation with Mrs. Truebody, her nurse, the latter’s charge, and her own fearful conviction of its truth. She remembered the sleepless horrors of that dreadful night; the simulated sleep at dawn, the absence of the nurse, the hasty dressing, the scribbled note, the slinking glide down the servants’ staircase, the swift dash into the garden, and the rapid exit—as it happened, unseen—by the private entrance.