“Perhaps I shall stay until you are obliged to go away yourselves to get rid of me,” return I, smiling. “Such things have happened. Yes, without joking, I will stay a month. Then, by the end of a month, if you have not found me out thoroughly, I think I may pass among men for a more amiable woman than I have ever yet had the reputation of.”
A quarter of an hour later I am laying down my head among soft and snow-white pillows, and saying to myself that this delicious sensation of utter drowsy repose, of soft darkness and odorous quiet, is cheaply purchased even by the ridiculous anguish which my own sufferings, and—hardly less than my own sufferings—the demoniac sights and sounds afforded by my fellow-passengers, caused me on board the accursed Leinster—
“Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark.”
CHAPTER II.
“Well, I cannot say that you look much rested,” says Jane next morning, coming in to greet me, smiling and fresh—(yes, sceptic of eighteen, even a woman of thirty-seven may look fresh in a print gown on an August morning, when she has a well of lasting quiet happiness inside her)—coming in with a bunch of creamy gloire de Dijons in her hand for the breakfast table. “You look infinitely more fagged than you did when I left you last night!”
“Do I?” say I, rather faintly.
“I am afraid you did not sleep much?” suggests Jane, a little crestfallen at the insult to her feather beds implied by my wakefulness. “Some people never can sleep the first night in a strange bed, and I stupidly forgot to ask whether you liked the feather bed or mattress at the top.”
“Yes, I did sleep,” I answer gloomily. “I wish to heaven I had not!”
“Wish—to—heaven—you—had—not?” repeats Jane slowly, with a slight astonished pause between each word. “My dear child, for what other purpose did you go to bed?”
“I—I—had bad dreams,” say I, shuddering a little and then taking her hand, roses and all, in mine. “Dear Jane, do not think me quite run mad, but—but—have you got a ‘Bradshaw’ in the house?”