"Oh no, thank you, ma'am," I said, hastily; "I shall not mind."

"Good night, then, Miss Bozerne," she said, very shortly; while I felt such a hypocrite that I hardly knew what to do. "Lost girl!" she continued, as she shut the door, and turned the key, which she took away with her, leaving poor Clara standing, pale and motionless, in the centre of the room; but no sooner had the light disappeared, and shone no more in beneath the crack at the bottom of the door, than she gave one great sob--

"Oh! Laura," she exclaimed; and then, throwing herself into my arms, she cried and sobbed so wildly and hysterically, that I was quite frightened.

For she was now giving vent to the pent-up feelings of the last quarter of an hour; but after awhile she calmed down, and with only a sob now and then to interrupt us--for, of course, I too could not help crying-- we quietly talked the matter over.

"No; not a word," said the poor girl, in answer to a question of mine-- which, of course, you can guess--"not a word; they may send me away and punish me as they like, but not a word will I ever say about it."

"Then they know nothing at all about me, or--" I stammered and stopped.

"You ought to have more confidence in me than to ask such a thing,"

cried Clara, pa.s.sionately, as she began to sob again. "You would not have betrayed me if you had been in my position; now, would you?"

I did not know. While, being naturally nervous, I was afraid perhaps I might, if put to the test; but I did not say so.

"What could have made that horrible crashing noise?" said Clara at last; "do you think it was the policeman, dear?"

"Perhaps it was," I said; "but I know poor Achille went into the cistern. I pushed him in; and I'm afraid he must have been drowned, for I'm not sure that I heard him crawl out. Oh, dear! oh, dear!" I said at last, "what a pa.s.sion is this love! I feel so old, and worn, and troubled I could die."

"It would be ruin to the poor Signor to be found out," murmured Clara-- thinking more of her tiresome, old, brown Italian than of poor Achille.

"Oh me! I know it was all my fault; but then how odd that the policeman should have had a meeting too! Or was he watching? Poor Giulio! would that I had never let him love me. I declared that I did not like him a bit to-night when we were together, and I had quite made up my mind never to meet him any more without he would talk of something else than beautiful Italy. Bother beautiful Italy! But now I half think I love him so dearly that I would dare anything for him. That I would."

Poor girl! she grew so hysterical again, that I quite grieved for her, and told her so; and then, poor thing, she crept up close to me; and really it did seem so n.o.ble of her to take all the blame and trouble upon herself, while she was so considerate over it, that I could not help loving her very, very, very much for it all. But at last we both dropped off soundly asleep, just as the birds were beginning to twitter in the garden; and, feeling very dull and low-spirited, I was half wishing that I was a little bird myself, to sit and sing the day long, free from any trouble; no lessons to learn, no exercises to puzzle one's brain, no cross lady princ.i.p.al or teachers, no mamma to send me to be finished. And it was just as I was half feeling that I could soar away into the blue arch of heaven, that I went into the deep sleep wherein I was tortured by seeing those eyes again--always those eyes--peering at me; but this time out of the deep black water of the cistern. By that I knew that I had drowned poor Achille, and that was to be my punishment-- always to sit, unable to tear myself away, and be gazed at by those dreadful eyes from out of the deep, black water of the tank.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

MEMORY THE TWELFTH--THAN NEXT MORNING.

I have often awoke of a morning with the sensation of a heavy, pressing-down weight upon my mental faculties; and so it was after the dreadful catastrophe narrated in the last chapter. I opened my eyes, feeling--no, let me be truthful, I did not wake, for Patty Smith brought me to my senses by tapping my head with her nasty penetrating hair-brush--feeling, as I said before, feeling that the dull pressure upon me was caused by the dread truth that poor Achille really was drowned; while it was the Signor whom I had heard escaping. And so strong was the impression, and so nervous and so low did I feel with the adventures of the past night, that I turned quite miserable, and could not keep from crying.

The morning was enough to give anybody the horrors, for it rained heavily; and there were the poor birds, soaking wet, and with their feathers sticking close to their sides, hopping about upon the lawn, looking for worms. All over the window-panes, and hanging to the woodwork, were great tears, as if the clouds shared my trouble and sorrow; while all the flowers looked drooping and dirty, and splashed and miserable.

Then I began to think about Achille, and his coming to give his lesson that morning; and then about his being in the cistern, with those wonderful eyes looking out at me; when, there again, if there was not that tiresome old Tennyson's poem getting into my poor, weary head, and, do what I would, I could not keep it out. There it was--buzz, buzz, buzz--"Dreary--and weary--and will not come, she said;" till at last I began to feel as if I was the real Mariana in the Moated Grange.

To make me worse, too, there was that poor Clara--pale-faced, red-eyed, and desolate-looking--sitting there dressed, and resting her hot head upon her hand as she gazed out of the window; and though I wished to comfort her, I felt to want the comfort more myself. At last I could bear it no longer, and, in place of weeping gently, I was so nervous, and low, and upset with the night's troubles, that I sat down and had a regular good cry, and all the while with that great, stupid, fat, gawky goose of a Patty sitting and staring at me, with her head all on one side, as she was brushing out half of her hair, which she had not finished in all the time I had taken to dress.

"Don't, Patty!" I half shrieked, at last--she was so tiresome.

"Well, I ain't," said Patty.

"But please don't, then!" I exclaimed, angrily.

"Don't what?" said the great, silly thing.

"Don't stare so, and look so big and glumpy!" I exclaimed; for I felt as if I could have knocked off her tiresome head, only it was so horribly big; and I don't care what anybody says, there never were anywhere before such a tempting pair of cheeks to slap as Patty's--they always looked so round, and red, and soft, and pluffy.

"You ain't well," said the nasty, aggravating thing, in her silly, slow way. "Take one of my Seidlitz powders."

"Ugh!" I shuddered at the very name of them. Just as if one of the nasty, p.r.i.c.kly-water, nose-tickling things was going to do me any good at such a time as this.

It really was enough to make one hit her. I never did take a Seidlitz powder but once, and then it was just after reading "Undine" with the Fraulein, and my head was all full of water-nymphs, and G.o.ds, and "The Mummelsee and the Water Maidens," and all sorts. And when I shut my eyes, and drank the fizzing-up thing, it all seemed to tickle my nose and lips; and I declare if I did not half fancy I was drinking the waters of the sparkling Rhine, and one of the water-G.o.ds had risen to kiss me, and that was his nasty p.r.i.c.kly moustache I had felt. But to return to that dreadful morning when Patty wanted me to take one of her Seidlitz powders.

"Mix 'em in two gla.s.ses is best," she went on, without taking any notice of my look of disgust--"the white paper in one, and the blue paper in the other, and then drink off the blue first, and wait while you count twenty, and then drink off the white one--slushions they call 'em. It does make you feel so droll, and does your head ever so much good. Do have one, dear!"

I know that I must have slapped her--nothing could have prevented it--if just then the door had not been unlocked, and that horrible Miss Furness came in.

"When you are ready, Miss Smith, you will descend with Miss Bozerne--I will wait for you," said the screwy old thing; but she took not the slightest notice of poor Clara, who sat there by the window, with her forehead all wrinkled up, and looking at least ten years older. It was of no good for one's heart to bleed for her, not a bit, with Miss Furness, who had undertaken to act the part of gaoler, there; so I gave the poor, suffering darling one last, meaning look, which was of no use, for it was wasted through the poor thing not looking up; and then I followed Miss Furness out of the room, side by side with Patty Smith, whose saucer eyes grew quite cheese-platish as she saw the door locked to keep poor Clara in; and then the tiresome thing kept bothering me in whispers to know what was the matter, for she was quite afraid of Miss Furness.

However, I answered nothing, and went into the miserable, dreary, damp-looking cla.s.sroom with an aching heart, and waited till the breakfast bell rang. For there was a bell rung for everything, when there was not the slightest necessity for such nonsense, only it all aided to make the Cedars imposing, and advertised it to the country round. But when I went into the hall, to cross it to reach the breakfast-room, there were a couple of boxes and a bundle at the foot of the back stairs, and the tall page getting himself into a tangle with some cord as he pretended to be tying them up.

Just then the drawing-room door opened, and I heard Mrs Blunt say--

"And don't apply to me for a character, whatever you do;" whilst, very red-eyed and weeping, out came Sarah Ann, the housemaid.

"Once more," said Mrs Blunt, "do you mean to tell me who it was that I distinctly saw, with my very own eyes, standing upon the leads talking to you?"

But Ann only gave a sob and a gulp, and I knew then that they did not know who had come to see her; whilst I felt perfectly certain that it was _the_ policeman, and, besides, the Signor and Achille must have seen what he was.

I was standing close to Miss Furness, who, as soon as she saw Ann, began to bridle up with virtuous indignation; and then set to and hunted the girls into the breakfast-room.

"Is Ann going away?" said Patty Smith, in her dawdly, sleepy way. "I like Ann. What's she going away for, Miss Furness, please?"

"Hush!" exclaimed Miss Furness, in a horrified way. "Don't ask such questions. She is a very wicked and hardened girl, and Mrs Fortesquieu de Blount has dismissed her, lest she should contaminate either of the other servants."

"I'll tell you all about it, presently," whispered Celia Blang; but not in such a low voice but that the indignant Miss Furness overheard her.

"You will do nothing of the kind," said the cross old maid, "and I desire that you instantly go back to your seat. If you know anything, you will be silent--silence is golden. Such things are not to be talked about, Miss Blang."

Celia made a grimace behind her back, although she was said to be Miss Furness's spy, and supposed to tell her everything; so Patty's curiosity remained unsatisfied, while of course I pretended to know nothing at all about what had been going on.

Directly after breakfast, though, Patty had it all by heart, and came red-hot to tell me how that Clara had been caught trying to elope out of the conservatory, whilst Ann was talking from the tall staircase window, when Miss Sloman happened to hear a whispering--for she was lying awake with a bad fit of the toothache. So she went and alarmed the lady princ.i.p.al; and then, with Miss Furness and the Fraulein, they had all watched, and they found it out. Some one, too, had been in the tank, and the conservatory windows were broken, and that was all, except that Mrs Blunt had been writing to Lady Fitzacre--Clara's mamma--and the poor girl was to be expelled; while for the present she was to be kept in her room till her mamma came, unless she would say who was the gentleman she was about to elope with--such stuff!--and then, if she would confess, she was to sit with Mrs Blunt, under surveillance, as they called it. When, leaving alone betraying the poor Signor, of course Clara preferred staying in her own room.

Such a miserable wet morning, and though I wanted to, very badly indeed, I could not get into the conservatory to set my poor mind at rest by poking down into the cistern with a blind lath; for if I had gone it might have raised suspicions.

Could he still be in the tank, and were my dreams in slumber right?

"Oh, how horrible!" I thought; "why, I should feel always like his murderer."

But, there, I could not help it--it was fate, my fate, and his fate--my fate to be his murderess, his to be drowned; and I would have given worlds, if I had had them, to be able to faint, when about eleven o'clock the cook came to the door, and asked Mrs Blunt, in a strange, mysterious way, to please come into the conservatory. For the man servant had not come back from the station, and taking Ann's boxes.

"Oh, he's there, he's there!" I muttered, as I wrung my hands beneath the table, and closed my eyes, thinking of the inquest and the other horrors to come; and seeing in imagination his wet body laid upon the white stones in the conservatory.

Oh, how I wanted to faint--how I tried to faint, and go off in a deep swoon, that should rest me for a while from the racking thoughts that troubled me. But I could not manage it anyhow; for of course nothing but the real thing would do at such a time as this.

Out went Mrs Blunt, to return in five minutes with what I thought to be a terribly pale face, as she beckoned out the three teachers who were most in her confidence, Miss Murray being considered too young and imprudent.

There! I never felt anything so agonising in my life--never; and I could not have borne it any longer anyhow. I'm sure, in another moment I must have been horribly hysterical and down upon the floor, tapping the boards with my heels, as I once saw mamma--and of course such things are hereditary--only I was saved by hearing a step upon the gravel.