Then, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice thing to have done!  Now I was hot and had made the worst of it instead of the best.

At last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more yet, Charley all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the garden, “Here she comes, miss!  Here she is!”

I did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid myself behind the door.  There I stood trembling, even when I heard my darling calling as she came upstairs, “Esther, my dear, my love, where are you?  Little woman, dear Dame Durden!”

She ran in, and was running out again when she saw me.  Ah, my angel girl!  The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection.  Nothing else in it—­no, nothing, nothing!

Oh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful girl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely cheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a child, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and pressing me to her faithful heart.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Jarndyce and Jarndyce

If the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it to Ada before we had been long together.  But it was not mine, and I did not feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless some great emergency arose.  It was a weight to bear alone; still my present duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the attachment of my dear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement to do it.  Though often when she was asleep and all was quiet, the remembrance of my mother kept me waking and made the night sorrowful, I did not yield to it at another time; and Ada found me what I used to be—­except, of course, in that particular of which I have said enough and which I have no intention of mentioning any more just now, if I can help it.

The difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first evening when Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the house, and when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Lady Dedlock had spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great.  Greater still when Ada asked me what she had said, and when I replied that she had been kind and interested, and when Ada, while admitting her beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner and her imperious chilling air.  But Charley helped me through, unconsciously, by telling us that Lady Dedlock had only stayed at the house two nights on her way from London to visit at some other great house in the next county and that she had left early on the morning after we had seen her at our view, as we called it.  Charley verified the adage about little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more sayings and doings in a day than would have come to my ears in a month.

We were to stay a month at Mr. Boythorn’s.  My pet had scarcely been there a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening after we had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and just as the candles were lighted, Charley, appearing with a very important air behind Ada’s chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the room.