“The doctor! Do you think I’m going to begin taking physic, at my time of life? Lord, ma’am! you amuse me—you do indeed!” She burst into a sudden fit of laughter; the hysterical laughter which is on the verge of tears. With a desperate effort, she controlled herself. “Please, don’t make a fool of me again,” she said—and left the room.
“What do you think now?” Miss Ladd asked.
Francine appeared to be still on her guard.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said evasively.
Miss Ladd looked at her in silent surprise, and withdrew.
Left by herself, Francine sat with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, absorbed in thought. After a long interval, she opened her desk—and hesitated. She took a sheet of note-paper—and paused, as if still in doubt. She snatched up her pen, with a sudden recovery of resolution—and addressed these lines to the wife of her father’s agent in London:
“When I was placed under your care, on the night of my arrival from the West Indies, you kindly said I might ask you for any little service which might be within your power. I shall be greatly obliged if you can obtain for me, and send to this place, a supply of artists’ modeling wax—sufficient for the production of a small image.”
CHAPTER XXXIV. IN THE DARK.
A week later, Alban Morris happened to be in Miss Ladd’s study, with a report to make on the subject of his drawing-class. Mrs. Ellmother interrupted them for a moment. She entered the room to return a book which Francine had borrowed that morning.