Ellen had no particular reason to think _she_ was meant, and yet she did think so. She remained quite still, but with raised colour and quickened breathing waited to hear what would come next. Nothing came at first, and she was beginning to think she had perhaps been mistaken, when she plainly heard Margaret Dunscombe say, in a loud whisper, "Mamma, I wish you could contrive some way to keep her in the cabin--can't you? she looks so odd in that queer sun-bonnet kind of a thing, that anybody would think she had come out of the woods, and no gloves too; I shouldn't like to have the Miss M'Arthurs think she belonged to us;--can't you, mamma?" If a thunderbolt had fallen at Ellen's feet, the shock would hardly have been greater. The lightning of passion shot through every vein. And it was not passion only; there was hurt feeling and wounded pride, and the sorrow of which her heart was full enough before, now wakened afresh. The child was beside herself. One wild wish for a hiding-place was the most pressing thought,--to be where tears could burst and her heart could break unseen. She slid off her bench and rushed through the crowd to the red curtain that cut off the far end of the saloon; and from there down to the cabin below,--people were everywhere. At last she spied a nook where she could be completely hidden. It was in the far-back end of the boat, just under the stairs by which she had come down. Nobody was sitting on the three or four large mahogany steps that ran round that end of the cabin and sloped up to the little cabin window; and creeping beneath the stairs, and seating herself on the lowest of these steps, the poor child found that she was quite screened and out of sight of every human creature. It was time indeed; her heart had been almost bursting with passion and pain, and now the pent-up tempest broke forth with a fury that racked her little frame from head to foot; and the more because she strove to stifle every sound of it as much as possible. It was the very bitterness of sorrow, without any softening thought to allay it, and sharpened and made more bitter by mortification and a passionate sense of unkindness and wrong. And through it all, how constantly in her heart the poor child was reaching forth longing arms towards her far-off mother, and calling in secret on her beloved name. "Oh, mamma! mamma!" was repeated numberless times, with the unspeakable bitterness of knowing that she would have been a sure refuge and protection from all this trouble, but was now where she could neither reach nor hear her. Alas! how soon and how sadly missed. Ellen's distress was not soon quieted, or, if quieted for a moment, it was only to break out afresh. And then she was glad to sit still and rest herself.