Produced by David Widger from page images generously provided by the Internet Archive MIRK ABBEY. By James Payne The Author Of “Lost Sir Massingberd;” “The Clyffards Of Clyffe;” &c., &c. In Three Volumes. Vol. II. London: 1866. CHAPTER I. MISTRESS AND MAID. |MARY,” said Lady Lisgard gravely, when her attendant had closed the door behind her, “I want to have a little serious talk with you to-night.” “As you please, my Lady,” returned Mistress Forest, in a tone which the other, did not fail to mark: it was a very respectful tone--a more humble one even than she was ordinarily wont to use--but there was a certain deliberation and set resolve about it too, which expressed as decidedly, as though she had used the words: “I am ready to listen, madam; but I know very well what you are going to ask me, and I have made up my mind already to answer 'No.'” “Mary,” continued my Lady earnestly, but not without a tremor in her kind soft voice, “come and sit here on the sofa beside me, and let us not be mistress and maid tonight, but only friends.” “Yes, madam;” and Mary's voice trembled too, for this unlooked-for arrangement would place her, she knew, at a disadvantage in the argument which was certainly at hand. “We have known one another many, many years, Mary--more than half our lives--and I don't think we have had a single quarrel yet.” “Not one, ma'am, not one,” assented the waiting-maid; already, after the manner of her susceptible kind, beginning to cry. “I can remember you when quite a child, Mary; not fifteen years old; as willing and kind-hearted a girl as the sun ever shone upon; and when I had not a friend in the world, nor even so much as a coin that I could call my own, and when I was weak and sick at heart, having lost all that was dear to me, I remember who it was that tended and caressed me as though I was her own sister.”