I stood for several moments absolutely petrified with amazement; and those upon whose offices I had thus unexpectedly intruded, in so warlike an attitude, returned my look with a gaze of scarcely less astonishment than mine. The poor young lady, who lay quite motionless, with her eyes just closed, appeared, however, wholly unconscious of the intrusion. Before I had recovered sufficiently from the stupefaction of this extraordinary discovery, Doctor Robertson had taken me roughly by the collar, and drew me, or rather pushed me out of the apartment.
In reply to his angry interrogatories, which he had suppressed until I had reached the lobby, I offered the best explanation, namely, the simple truth.
“Robbers, indeed!” he muttered—“more likely to be one of the gang yourself—”
And calling out one of the women, and having exchanged a few words in a whisper with her, I presume touching myself, he appeared satisfied, and told me to get down again as fast as I could, and to beware how I came again where I was not wanted. Sustaining as well as I could the character assigned me, as it were, by common consent, I conducted myself under this rebuke, as a respectful lackey might be supposed to do. I was so much shocked, that on reaching the chamber where I had been directed to wait, I could scarcely collect my thoughts. Only to think of Miss Chadleigh’s being reduced to a situation so strange and deplorable!—she whom I had last seen the admired of all beholders—the life and the ornament of the gay and elegant society in which she moved. Merciful heaven! how repulsive, degrading, and melancholy was the contrast. A prey to a thousand conflicting and tumultuous feelings, I leaned upon the old chimneypiece, gazing into the black and empty grate, lost, not in conjecture or surmise, but in mere confusion, amazement, and, I might almost add, consternation.
While thus engaged, I was tapped on the shoulder by the old woman, whose entrance I had not perceived.
“Poor young lady!” said I—“how is she now?”
“Bad enough,” said the woman—“don’t your hear her?”
“Poor thing! she seems very ill, indeed!” I answered.
“Ay, ay,” she repeated, with a smile, for which I could have strangled her, “it’s all one, rich or poor, on that bed. She’s in the hands of God now, an’ nothing but Him and patience to look to—”
“God help her—God help her!” I repeated.
“Och, never a fear of her,” said she, snuffing the candle with her bony fingers; and then putting her hand in her pocket, she gave me a note, saying—
“You’re to bring that to him the minute the child’s born; and mind, you’re to tell him—for the foolish creature set her heart on it—that she wrote it the very last minute she could hold a pen, do you mind? and don’t go until I come back and tell you whether it’s a boy or a girl; though, God knows, I don’t see much differ it makes.”
With this remark she withdrew, and I, with intense curiosity, approached the candle to read the address of the billet. “Richard Hamilton Jennings, Esq.,” was written with a trembling hand upon it, and, fortunately for my incognito, his address in full subscribed. I now began, for the first time, fully to appreciate the extreme awkwardness and embarrassment of the very equivocal position into which my precipitate folly had led me. I had become possessed of a secret, involving the reputations, perhaps the lives of others, and by a coincidence which, however purely accidental and unpremeditated upon my part, I yet could not help perceiving might, at the same time, expose me to the most painful and disreputable surmises and misconstruction. It was, however, too late now to extricate myself, without possibly doing still further mischief; my now withdrawing could effect no possible good; and, on the whole, I judged it best to perform the services committed to the domestic whose place I had so foolishly taken, and then to confide in Doctor Robertson (whose character, as well as his appearance, I perfectly knew, although I had no actual acquaintance with himself), the exact nature of my position in the affair, believing, and as I still think, with reason, that it would be a relief to the parties who had reason to dread being compromised, to learn that their secret accidentally divulged, had, at all events, fallen into the keeping of a gentleman and a man of honour.
I had hardly arrived at this resolution, when I heard the stealthy tread, and the uneasy respiration of the old woman on her return.
“Well, it’s all over, an’ a quick case it was,” she murmured, as she entered. “She may well be thankful, so she may, not to be undher them, like many a poor creature that’s bad fur a night and a day, and longer.”
“And how is she?” I urged.
“Och, well enough—as well as can be,” she answered—“right well. Don’t be delaying any longer; an’ don’t drop the note, for the life of you. Tell him it’s a boy, an’ a real
