But that
she should peruse its pages was not in the bond. Her eyes were old and
weak--sharp enough to discover the short-comings of Mr. Sheldon's young
maid-servants, but too feeble even for long-primer.
As she looked round that snug little chamber of an evening, when her
day's labours were ended, and her own particular Britannia-metal tea-pot
was basking in the fender, her own special round of toast frizzling on
the trivet, she was very grateful to the man to whom she owed these
comforts.
"What should I be but for him?" she asked herself with a shudder; for
the vision of that darksome abode shut in by high black walls--the
metropolitan workhouse--arose before her. She did not know what
difficulties would have barred her entrance even to that dreary
asylum; she only thought of the horrors of that sanctuary, and she
blessed her master for the benevolence that had accepted the service
of her failing hands.
This was the servant on whom Philip Sheldon relied. He saw that she was
grateful, and that she was ready to serve him with an almost slavish
devotion. He knew that she had suspected him in the past, and he saw that
she had outlived her suspicion.
"There is a statute of limitations to these things as well as for debt,"
he said to himself. "A man can live down anything, if he knows what he
is about."
CHAPTER II.
FIRM AS A BOOK.
After that midnight interview between the two girls in Miss Halliday's
bedroom, life went very smoothly at the gothic villa for two or three
days, during which the impulsive Charlotte, being forbidden to talk
openly of the change in her friend's position, was fain to give vent to
her feelings by furtive embraces and hand-squeezings, sly nods and
meaning becks, and mischievous twinkling of her arch grey eyes.
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