It came back to her slowly, slowly, but
surely. All that dreadful scene, all those moments of suspense too
terrible even to be borne, they returned to her memory.
Her Russia-leather purse of gold and notes were gone, the fifteen
pounds she was to spend in looking for Lovedy, the forty pounds she
was to give as her dead mother's dying gift to the wandering girl,
had vanished. Cecile felt that as surely as if she had flung it into
the sea, was that purse now lost. She had broken her promise, her
solemn, solemn promise to the dead; everything, therefore, was now
over for her in life.
When Jane came back with the nice hot tea, Cecile received it with a
wan smile. But there was such a look of utter, unchildlike despair in
her lovely eyes that, as the handmaiden expressed it, telling the
tale afterward, her heart went up into her mouth with pity.
"Cecile," said the young woman, when the tea-drinking had come to an
end, "I sees by yer face, poor lamb, as you remembers all about what
made you drop down in that faint. And look you here, my lamb, you've
got to tell me, Jane Parsons, all about it; and what is more, if I
can help you I will. You tell Jane all the whole story, honey, for it
'ud go to a pagan's heart to see you, and so it would; and you
needn't be feared, for she ain't anywheres about. She said as she
wanted no dinner, and she's safe in her room a-reckoning the money in
the purse, I guess."
"Oh, Jane!" said little Cecile, "the purse! the Russia-leather
purse! I think I'll die, since Aunt Lydia Purcell has found the
Russia-leather purse.
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