The little room, with its snow-white bed and dainty furniture, including well-filled bookshelves and a pretty writing-table, looked different from of old; it did not seem to belong to Doris in the familiar way in which it had always hitherto belonged to her. Everything was changed. Or perhaps it was she who was changed and who saw everything with other eyes than of yore, and, recognising this, she sobbed, "It will never be the same again--never, never! I shall _never_ be happy again." And then, because she was so lonely and so much in need of help, she knelt down by her bedside, and poured out her full heart to Him who comforts those who mourn and who strengthens the weak and binds up the broken-hearted. After which, still sobbing, though more gently, she undressed and went to bed. Thoroughly tired out in mind and body the poor girl slept heavily and dreamlessly for many hours, so many in fact that she did not awake until quite late the next morning. Then, oh, the pain of that awaking, the pain and the shame! Would she ever forget it? The maidservants came into her room one after another, the young housemaid and cook, and Susan Gaunt, the faithful old servant who acted as working-housekeeper; they were all in consternation, asking question after question of the poor distracted girl. Where were her parents? Would she tell them what she knew about them? When had she seen them last? What could have happened to them? and so on. Doris asked what they meant? Were not her father and mother in the house? What had happened? What were they concealing from her? "Tell me everything?" she implored in piteous accents. The servants, perceiving that she knew nothing of her parents’ disappearance, began to answer all together, making a confusion of voices. Their master and mistress had gone away: they had vanished in the night. Their beds had not been slept in. No one knew where they had gone. And this was the day upon which Mr. Bernard Cameron was to come of age. Mr. Hamilton and the family lawyer were expected to lunch, and so were Mrs. Cameron and her son. What should they (the servants) do if the master and mistress were absent? Doris, half stunned and wholly distracted, ordered every one to leave the room, and, turning her face towards the wall, shed a few bitter tears. That, then, was what her parents had done; they had run away and had left their unhappy daughter behind. "It’s not right! They have not done the right thing!" Doris said to herself. "And they might have offered to take me with them," was the next thought: though, upon reflection, she knew that she could not have borne to leave Bernard in such a way, and neither would she have consented to flee from justice with those who had wronged him, even though they were her own parents. It was no use lying there crying, with her face turned towards the wall, and so she arose, and, having dressed, began to search for a letter or message which might have been left for her.