rcely know what thoughts I had; but
they ran risk of being hardly more rational and healthy than that
child's mind must have been.

I seldom caught a word of her prayers, for they were whispered low:
sometimes, indeed, they were not whispered at all, but put up
unuttered; such rare sentences as reached my ear still bore the burden,
"Papa; my dear papa!" This, I perceived, was a one-idea'd nature;
betraying that monomaniac tendency I have ever thought the most
unfortunate with which man or woman can be cursed.

What might have been the end of this fretting, had it continued
unchecked, can only be conjectured: it received, however, a sudden turn.

One afternoon, Mrs. Bretton, coaxing her from her usual station in a
corner, had lifted her into the window-seat, and, by way of occupying
her attention, told her to watch the passengers and count how many
ladies should go down the street in a given time. She had sat
listlessly, hardly looking, and not counting, when--my eye being fixed
on hers--I witnessed in its iris and pupil a startling transfiguration.
These sudden, dangerous natures--_sensitive_ as they are called--offer
many a curious spectacle to those whom a cooler temperament has secured
from participation in their angular vagaries. The fixed and heavy gaze
swum, trembled, then glittered in fire; the small, overcast brow
cleared; the trivial and dejected features lit up; the sad countenance
vanished, and in its place appeared a sudden eagerness, an intense
expectancy. "It _is_!" were her words.

Like a bird or a shaft, or any other swift thing, she was gone from the
room, How she got the house-door open I cannot tell; probably it might
be ajar; perhaps Warren was in the way and obeyed her behest, which
would be impetuous enough. I--watching calmly from the window--saw her,
in her black frock and tiny braided apron (to pinafores she had an
antipathy), dart half the length of the street; and, as I was on the
point of turning, and quietly announcing to Mrs. Bretton that the child
was run out mad, and ought instantly to be pursued, I saw her caught
up, and rapt at once from my cool observation, and from the wondering
stare of the passengers. A gentleman had done this good turn, and now,
covering her with his cloak, advanced to restore her to the house
whence he had seen her issue.

I concluded he would leave her in a servant's charge and withdraw; but
he entered: having tarried a little while below, he came up-stairs.