the window?”
“No, dearest cheaile; you will see’t time enough.”
“I’d like to get up,” I said.
“Time enough, my dear Maud; you are fatigue; you are sure you feel quite well?”
“Well enough to get up; I should be better, I think, out of bed.”
“There is no hurry, you know; you need not even go by the next packet. Your uncle, he tell me, I may use my discretion.”
“Is there any water?”
“They will bring some.”
“Please, Madame, ring the bell.”
She pulled it with alacrity. I afterwards learnt that it did not ring.
“What has become of my gipsy pin?” I demanded, with an unaccountable sinking of the heart.
“Oh! the little pin with the red top? maybe it ‘as fall on the ground; we weel find when you get up.”
I suspected that she had taken it merely to spite me. It would have been quite the ting she would have liked. I cannot describe to you how the loss of this little “charm” depressed and excited me. I searched the bed; I turned over all the bed-clothes; I searched in and outside; at last I gave up.
“How odious!” I cried; “somebody has stolen it merely to vex me.”
And, like a fool as I was, I threw myself on my face on the bed and wept, partly in anger, partly in dismay.
After a time, however, this blew over. I had a hope of recovering it. If Madame had stolen it, it would turn up yet. But in the meantime its disappearance troubled me like an omen.
“I am afraid, my dear cheaile, you are not very well. It is really very odd you should make such a fuss about a pin! Nobody would believe! Do you not theenk it would be a good plan to take a your breakfast in your bed?”
She continued to urge this point for some time. At last, however, having by this time recovered my self-command, and resolved to preserve ostensibly fair terms with Madame, who could contribute so essentially to make me wretched during the rest of my journey, and possibly to prejudice me very seriously on my arrival, I said quietly —
“Well, Madame, I know it is very silly; but I had kept that foolish little pin so long and so carefully, that I had grown quite fond of it; but I suppose it is lost, and I must content myself, though I cannot laugh as you do. So I will get up now, and dress.”
“I think you will do well to get all the repose you can,” answered Madame; “but as you please,” she aded, observing that I was getting up.
So soon as I had got some of my things on, I said —
“Is there a pretty view from the window?”
“No,” said Madame.
I looked out and saw a dreary quadrangle of cut stone, in one side of which my window was placed. As I looked a dream rose up before me.
“This hotel,” I said, in a puzzled way. “Is it a hotel? Why this is just like — it is the inner court of Bartram–Haugh!”
Madame clapped her large hands together, made a fantastic chassé on the floor, burst into a great nasal laugh like the scream of a parrot, and then said —
“Well, dearest Maud, is not clever trick?”
I was so utterly confounded that I could only stare about me in stupid silence, a spectacle which renewed Madame’s peals of laughter.
“We are at Bartram–Haugh!” I repeated, in utter consternation. “How was this done?”
I had no reply but shrieks of laughter, and one of those Walpurgis dances in which she excelled.
“It is a mistake — is it? What is it?”
“All a mistake, of course. Bartram–Haugh, it is so like Dover, as all philosophers know.”
I sat down in total silence, looking out into the deep and dark enclosure, and trying to comprehend the reality and the meaning of all this.
“Well, Madame, I suppose you will be able to satisfy my uncle of your fidelity and intelligence. But to me it seems that his money has been ill-spent, and his directions anything but well observed.”
“Ah, ha! Never mind; I think he will forgive me,” laughed Madame.
Her tone frightened me. I began to think, with a vague but overpowering sense of danger, that she had acted under the Machiavellian directions of her superior.
“You have brought me back, then, by my uncle’s orders?”
“Did I say so?”
“No; but what you have said can have no other meaning, though I can’t believe it. And why have I been brought here? What is the object of all this duplicity and truck. I will know. It is not possible that my uncle, a gentleman and a kinsman, can be privy to so disreputable a manoeuvre.”
“First you will eat your breakfast, dear Maud; next you can tell your story to your uncle, Monsieur Ruthyn; and then you shall hear what he thinks of my so terrible misconduct. What nonsense, cheaile! Can you not think how many things may ‘appen to change a your uncle’s plans? Is he not in danger to be arrest? Bah! You are cheaile still; you cannot have intelligence more than a cheaile. Dress yourself, and I will order breakfast.”
I could not comprehend the strategy which had been practised on me. Why had I been so shamelessly deceived? If it were decided that I should remain here, for what imaginable reason had I been sent so far on my journey to France? Why had I been conveyed back with such mystery? Why was I removed to this uncomfortable and desolate room, on the same floor with the apartment in which Clarke had met his death, and with no window commanding the front of the house, and no view but the deep and weed-choked court, that looked like a deserted churchyard in a city?
“I suppose I may go to my own room?” I said.
“Not to-day, my dear cheaile, for it was all disarrange when we go ‘way; ’twill be ready again in two three days.”?
“Where is Mary Quince?” I asked.
“Mary Quince! — she has follow us to France,” said Madame, making what in Ireland they call a bull.
“They are not sure where they will go or what will do for day or two more. I will go and get breakfast. Adieu for a moment.”
Madame was out of the door as she said this, and I thought I heard the key turn in the lock.
Chapter 62.
A Well-Known Face Looks in
YOU WHO have never experienced it can have no idea how angry and frightened you become under the sinister insult of being locked into a room, as on trying the door I found I was.
The key was in the lock; I could see it through the hole. I called after Madame, I shook at the solid oak-door, beat upon it with my hands, kicked it — but all to no purpose.
I rushed into the next room, forgetting — if indeed I had observed it, that there was no door from it upon the gallery. I turned round in an angry and dismayed perplexity, and, like prisoners in romances, examined the windows.
I was shocked and affrighted on discovering in reality what they occasionally find — a series of iron bars crossing the window! They were firmly secured in the oak woodwork of the window-frame, and each window was, besides, so compactly screwed down that it could not open. This bedroom was converted into a prison. A momentary hope flashed on me — perhaps all the windows were secured alike! But it was no such thing: these gaol-like precautions were confined to the windows to which I had access.
For