w these things touched me all the more because none of them belonged
to me; and, after thus trying to enlarge my views, I got up with much
better heart, and hurried on to have it over, whatever it might be.
A girl brought up in the real English way would have spent her last
shilling to drive up to the door in the fly at the station--a most sad
machine--but I thought it no disgrace to go in a more becoming manner.

One scarcely ever acts up to the force of situation; and I went as
quietly into that house as if it were Betsy Bowen's. If any body had
been rude to me, or asked who I was, or a little thing of that sort, my
spirit might have been up at once, and found, as usually happens then,
good reason to go down afterward. But happily there was nothing of the
kind. An elderly man, without any gaudy badges, opened the door very
quietly, and begged my pardon, before I spoke, for asking me to speak
softly. It was one of his lordship's very worst days, and when he was
so, every sound seemed to reach him. I took the hint, and did not speak
at all, but followed him over deep matting into a little room to which
he showed me. And then I gave him a little note, written before I left
Bruntsea, and asked him whether he thought that his master was well
enough to attend to it.

He looked at me in a peculiar manner, for he had known my father well,
having served from his youth in the family; but he only asked whether my
message was important. I answered that it was, but that I would wait for
another time rather than do any harm. But he said that, however ill his
master was, nothing provoked him more than to find that any thing was
neglected through it. And before I could speak again he was gone with my
letter to Lord Castlewood.

CHAPTER XXXII

AT HOME

Some of the miserable, and I might say strange, things which had
befallen me from time to time unseasonably, now began to force their
remembrance upon me. Such dark figures always seem to make the most of
a nervous moment, when solid reason yields to fluttering fear and small
misgivings. There any body seems to lie, as a stranded sailor lies, at
the foot of perpendicular cliffs of most inhuman humanity, with all the
world frowning down over the crest, and no one to throw a rope down.
Often and often had I felt this want of any one to help me, but the only
way out of it seemed to be to do my best to help myself.

Even, now I had little hope, having been so often dashed, and k