“Quite, my lady.”
“And let me, for your own sake, recommend you
to behave more respectfully when you find another
place.”
What she was doing lady Ann was incapable of knowing.
A woman love-brooding over a child is at the gate
of heaven; to take her child from her is to turn her
away from more than paradise.
Jane went in silence, seeming to accept the inevitable,
too proud to wipe away the tear whose rising she could
not help—a tear not for herself, nor yet
for the child, but for the dead mother in whose place
she left such a woman. She walked slowly back
to the nursery, where her charge was asleep, closed
the door, sat down by the cot, and sat for a while
without moving. Then her countenance began to
change, and slowly went on changing, until at last,
as through a mist of troubled emotion, out upon the
strong, rugged face broke, with strange suggestion
of a sunset, the glow of resolve and justified desire.
A maid more friendly than the rest brought her some
tea, but Jane said nothing of what had occurred.
When the child awoke, she fed him, and played with
him a long time—till he was thoroughly
tired, when she undressed him, and laying him down,
set about preparing his evening meal. No one
could have perceived in her any difference, except
indeed it were a subdued excitement in her glowing
eyes. When it was ready, she went to her box,
took from it a small bottle, and poured a few dark-coloured
drops into the food.
“God forgive me! it’s but this once!”
she murmured.
The child seemed not quite to relish his supper, but
did not refuse it, and was presently asleep in her
arms. She laid him down, took a book, and began
to read.
THE FLIGHT.
She read until every sound had died in the house,
every sound from garret to cellar, except the ticking
of clock, and the tinkling cracks of sinking fires
and cooling grates. In the regnant silence she
rose, laid aside her book, softly opened the door,
and stepped as softly into the narrow passage.
A moment or two she listened, then stole on tiptoe
to the main corridor, and again listened. She
went next to the head of the great stair, and once
more stood and listened. Then she crept down to
the drawing-room, saw that there was no light in the
library, billiard-room, or smoking-room, and with
stealthy feet returned to the nursery. There
she closed the door she had left open, and took the
child. He lay in her arms like one dead.
She removed everything he wore, and dressed him in
the garments which for the last fortnight she had been
making for him from clothes of her own. When
she had done, he looked like any cottager’s
child; there was nothing in his face to contradict
his attire. She regarded the result for a moment
with a triumph of satisfaction, laid him down, and
proceeded to put away the clothes he had worn.
