Janet breathed more freely when it was safely out of her pocket and in
the post-office box. Nobody could see it now; she was safe, at least for
the time. It is needless to say that she added not a word, explanatory
or otherwise, to that curious piece of paper. She wrote the address with
the greatest care in her neatest hand. She was so girlish as to think
that her pretty handwriting, the fresh glossy envelope which she
selected so carefully, rejecting one which had a small speck upon it,
and which was a little brown at one corner--would go to his heart, and
that he would remark those signs of her care to please him. Poor little
Janet! She was not a girl of lofty sentiments, nor a very loyal soul;
but she was very young, and had a world of foolish expectation still in
her inexperienced heart.
Thus her former terror about the mystery which she had discovered so
close to her was quieted in her mind almost entirely by the coming in of
something more powerful. Sometimes a vague thrill of terror would pass
through her when she looked at the door so hermetically closed, the door
which had once trembled and given way under her slight fingers. In the
middle of the night she sometimes woke with a start thinking she heard
some one at her door, afraid to open her eyes lest she should see the
whiteness in her room of the white beard and pallid face.
She took to locking her door from that time, a practice for which she
was much scoffed at by Julia, who discovered it at once and wished to
know, satirically, what she was afraid of? Was it robbers, and did Janet
think they would come up all the way to the second floor for her,
instead of going at once to the pantry for the plate? Janet could not
make an answer to this assault, but she continued to lock her door and
to look carefully around her room every night to make sure that no one
was there.
This, however, was the only effect that the vision in the wing had upon
her. Another matter, far closer and more urgent, was introduced into her
thoughts. There were now two people whose whole attention was bent on
the sounds outside in the still evenings when they sat over their
needlework, listening intently for a step, for the sound of the bell. To
meet him and Gussy within the same four walls, to see his eyes turn to
her, and know that Miss Harwood looked on, this was far more difficult
than any mystery for Janet to bear.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Gussy Harwood awoke next morning with a sense of exhilaration in her
mind, as if, during the night, some burden had rolled off her shoulders.
Had any burden been rolled off? The first sensation in the morning of
pain or pleasure is not always a true one, but there is none so poignant
or which leaves so much impression on the mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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