This question I could not answer: I had no words.
It seemed as if she thought I had answered
it.
“Very right, my child. We should acknowledge
God merciful, but not always for us comprehensible.
We should accept our own lot, whatever it be, and
try to render happy that of others. Should we
not? Well, to-morrow I will begin by trying to
make you happy. I will endeavour to do something
for you, Lucy: something that will benefit you
when I am dead. My head aches now with talking
too much; still I am happy. Go to bed. The
clock strikes two. How late you sit up; or rather
how late I, in my selfishness, keep you up. But
go now; have no more anxiety for me; I feel I shall
rest well.”
She composed herself as if to slumber. I, too,
retired to my crib in a closet within her room.
The night passed in quietness; quietly her doom must
at last have come: peacefully and painlessly:
in the morning she was found without life, nearly
cold, but all calm and undisturbed. Her previous
excitement of spirits and change of mood had been the
prelude of a fit; one stroke sufficed to sever the
thread of an existence so long fretted by affliction.
TURNING A NEW LEAF.
My mistress being dead, and I once more alone, I had
to look out for a new place. About this time
I might be a little—a very little—
shaken in nerves. I grant I was not looking well,
but, on the contrary, thin, haggard, and hollow-eyed;
like a sitter-up at night, like an overwrought servant,
or a placeless person in debt. In debt, however,
I was not; nor quite poor; for though Miss Marchmont
had not had time to benefit me, as, on that last night,
she said she intended, yet, after the funeral, my
wages were duly paid by her second cousin, the heir,
an avaricious-looking man, with pinched nose and narrow
temples, who, indeed, I heard long afterwards, turned
out a thorough miser: a direct contrast to his
generous kinswoman, and a foil to her memory, blessed
to this day by the poor and needy. The possessor,
then, of fifteen pounds; of health, though worn, not
broken, and of a spirit in similar condition; I might
still; in comparison with many people, be regarded
as occupying an enviable position. An embarrassing
one it was, however, at the same time; as I felt with
some acuteness on a certain day, of which the corresponding
one in the next week was to see my departure from
my present abode, while with another I was not provided.
In this dilemma I went, as a last and sole resource,
to see and consult an old servant of our family; once
my nurse, now housekeeper at a grand mansion not far
from Miss Marchmont’s. I spent some hours
with her; she comforted, but knew not how to advise
me. Still all inward darkness, I left her about
twilight; a walk of two miles lay before me; it was
a clear, frosty night. In spite of my solitude,
my poverty, and my perplexity, my heart, nourished
