The words seemed unanswerable at the time, inconsistent as they were with her past reproaches.  Again she said—­when the same murmur left my lips upon a later occasion—­looking at me sorrowfully as she spoke, and with something incomprehensible to me in her expression that affected me strangely:  “Wait until you are of age, Miriam:  all can be arranged definitely then; but now, the waves might as well chafe against the rocks that bind them in their bed, as you against your condition;” adding with a tragic look and tone, half playful, of course, “Votre sort, c’est moi.  You remember what Louis XIV. said, ‘L’Etat, c’est moi;’ now be pacified, I implore you—­all will still be well,” and she patted my shoulder kindly, and kissed my forehead.

Her forbearance touched me; but the time came when all this was thrown aside.  It was the old fable again of the bee and the bee-moth.  Having failed in her first efforts, she was now very gradually gluing me against the hive.

Evelyn, as I have said, had always been at the head of my father’s house and mine, and, by his will, was still to remain so until my marriage, or majority—­one, usually, in the eyes of the law, in most respects.  So it pained me infinitely less than it must have done had a different order of things ever existed, to see her supreme at Monfort Hall, and to feel that every thing emanated from her hand.

Of all the servants, old Morton alone seemed to feel the difference.  Mrs. Austin had always openly preferred Evelyn to me, and Mabel to either—­so that matters worked very well between those three.  For, though I do not think Evelyn loved Mabel, nor Mabel Evelyn, yet, with this link between them of servile affection, they managed very well, without much feeling on either side.

Mrs. Austin certainly spoiled Mabel, yet she only rendered her self-indulged, not selfish—­for this difference arises out of temperament and disposition—­and no mother could have been more tender or vigilant of her comfort or welfare, than was this ancient and attached nurse and servitor.  I mention this here, for it reconciled me later, somewhat, to an inevitable separation, that must have been else thrice bitter.  But the culmination approaches!

I was lying, one evening, on a deep velvet couch in the library, now rarely used except for business purposes—­for, again, fires and lights sparkled, in their respective seasons, in the several receiving-rooms of Monfort Hall, maintained by Evelyn’s bounty—­when, overpowered by the influence of the hour, and the weariness of my own unprofitable thoughts, and perhaps the dreary play of Racine’s that I was reading, I dropped asleep.

The sofa was placed in a deep embrasure, surrounded with sweeping curtains, for the convenience of reading in a reclining posture, by the light of the window, and quite shut away, by such means, from the remainder of the room.

To-night, a chilly one in August, very unusual for that season, the window was down, and the drawn curtains kept off the light of the dim lamp that swung from the centre of the apartment immediately above the octagon centre-table.