consistently with care for the dress she could not
change. She blamed herself extremely for having forgotten her Bible and
Prayer-book when hastily making up her bundle of necessaries, and though
there was little chance that Madge should possess either, or be able to
read, she nerved herself to ask. "Bible! what should ye want of a Bible,
unless to play the hypocrite? I hain't got none!" was the reply.

So Aurelia could only walk up and down the court trying to repeat the
Psalms, and afterwards the poetry she had learnt for Mr. Belamour's
benefit, sometimes deriving comfort from the promises, but oftener
wondering whether he had indeed deserted her in anger at her distrustful
curiosity. She tried to scrape the mossgrown Triton, she crept up stairs
to the window that looked towards the City, and cleared off some of the
dimness, and she got a needle and thread and tried to darn the holes
in the curtains and cushions, but the rotten stuff crumbled under her
fingers, and would not hold the stitches. At last she found in a dusty
corner a boardless book with neither beginning nor end, being Defoe's
_Plague of London_. She read and read with a horrid fascination,
believing every word of it, wondering whether this house could have been
infected, and at length feeling for the plague spot!

A great church-clock enabled her to count the hours! Oh, how many there
were of them! How many more would there be? This was only her
second day, and deliverance could not come for weeks, were her young
husband--if husband he were--ever so faithful. How should she find
patience in this dreariness, interspersed with fits of alarm lest he
should be dangerously ill and suffering? She fell on her knees and
prayed for him and for herself!

Here it was getting dark again, and Madge would hunt her in presently
and shut the shutters. Hark! what was that? A bell echoing over the
house! Madge came after her. "Where are you, my fine mistress! Go you
into the parlour, I say," and she turned the key upon the prisoner,
whose heart beat like a bird fluttering in a cage. Suddenly her door was
opened, and in darted Fidelia and Lettice, who flung themselves upon her
with ecstatic shrieks of "Cousin Aura, dear cousin Aura!" Loveday was
behind, directing the bringing in of trunks from a hackney coach. All
she said was, "My Lady's daughters are to be with you for the night,
madam; I must not say more, for her ladyship is waiting for me."

She was gone, while th