Presently she heard the voice of the chambermaid upstairs, at a distance at first, and coming nearer and nearer. "Breakfast ready, ladies! — Ladies, breakfast ready!" — and then came all the people in a rush pouring down the stairs over Ellen's head. She kept quite still and close, for she did not want to see anybody, and could not bear that anybody should see her. Nobody did see her — they all went off into the next cabin, where breakfast was set. Ellen began to grow tired of her hiding-place, and to feel restless in her confinement — she thought this would be a good time to get away; so she crept from her station under the stairs, and mounted them as quick and as quietly as she could. She found almost nobody left in the saloon — and, breathing more freely, she possessed herself of her despised bonnet, which she had torn off her head in the first burst of her indignation, and passing gently out at the door, went up the stairs which led to the promenade deck — she felt as if she could not get far enough from Mrs. Dunscombe. The promenade-deck was very pleasant in the bright morning sun: and nobody was there except a few gentlemen. Ellen sat down on one of the settees that were ranged along the middle of it, and much pleased at having found herself such a nice place of retreat, she once more took up her interrupted amusement of watching the banks of the river. It was a fair, mild day, near the end of October, and one of the loveliest of that lovely month. Poor Ellen, however, could not fairly enjoy it just now. There was enough darkness in her heart to put a veil over all nature's brightness. The thought did pass through her mind, when she first went up, how very fair everything was; but she soon forgot to think about it at all. They were now in a wide part of the river, and the shore towards which she was looking was low and distant, and offered nothing to interest her. She ceased to look at it, and presently lost all sense of everything around and before her, for her thoughts went home. She remembered that sweet moment, last night, when she lay in her mother's arms, after she had stopped singing — could it be only last night? — it seemed a long, long time ago. She went over again, in imagination, her shocked waking up that very morning — how cruel that was! — her hurried dressing — the miserable parting — and those last words of her mother, that seemed to ring in her ears yet — "That home where parting cannot be." "Oh!" thought Ellen, "how shall I ever get there? Who is there to teach me now? Oh! what shall I do without you? Oh, Mamma! how much I want you already!"