Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again,
this was a nice thing to have done! Now I was
hot and had made the worst of it instead of the best.
At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter
of an hour more yet, Charley all at once cried out
to me as I was trembling in the garden, “Here
she comes, miss! Here she is!”
I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my
room and hid myself behind the door. There I
stood trembling, even when I heard my darling calling
as she came upstairs, “Esther, my dear, my love,
where are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!”
She ran in, and was running out again when she saw
me. Ah, my angel girl! The old dear look,
all love, all fondness, all affection. Nothing
else in it—no, nothing, nothing!
Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my
sweet beautiful girl down upon the floor too, holding
my scarred face to her lovely cheek, bathing it with
tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a child,
calling me by every tender name that she could think
of, and pressing me to her faithful heart.
Jarndyce and Jarndyce
If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must
have confided it to Ada before we had been long together.
But it was not mine, and I did not feel that I had
a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless some
great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear
alone; still my present duty appeared to be plain,
and blest in the attachment of my dear, I did not
want an impulse and encouragement to do it.
Though often when she was asleep and all was quiet,
the remembrance of my mother kept me waking and made
the night sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another
time; and Ada found me what I used to be—except,
of course, in that particular of which I have said
enough and which I have no intention of mentioning
any more just now, if I can help it.
The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed
that first evening when Ada asked me, over our work,
if the family were at the house, and when I was obliged
to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock had
spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday,
was great. Greater still when Ada asked me what
she had said, and when I replied that she had been
kind and interested, and when Ada, while admitting
her beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner
and her imperious chilling air. But Charley
helped me through, unconsciously, by telling us that
Lady Dedlock had only stayed at the house two nights
on her way from London to visit at some other great
house in the next county and that she had left early
on the morning after we had seen her at our view, as
we called it. Charley verified the adage about
little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more
sayings and doings in a day than would have come to
my ears in a month.
We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn’s.
My pet had scarcely been there a bright week, as
I recollect the time, when one evening after we had
finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers,
and just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing
with a very important air behind Ada’s chair,
beckoned me mysteriously out of the room.
