“Time and patience,” said madame with her grand air of noble cheerfulness.  But she had just a moment’s paroxysm of dismay as she looked through the coming years, and thought of life shared between Leam’s untamable hate and her husband’s unmanly peevishness.  For that instant it seemed to her that she had bought her personal ease and security at a high price.

As Leam went up stairs the door of her stepmother’s room was standing open.  The maid had unpacked the boxes most in request, and was now at tea in the servants’ hall, telling of her adventures in Paris, where master and mistress had spent the honeymoon, and in her own way the heroine of the hour, like her betters in the parlor.  The world seemed all wrong everywhere, life a cheat and love a torture, to Leam, as she stood within the open door, looking at the room which had been hers and her mother’s, now transformed and appropriated to this stranger, She did not understand how papa could have done it.  The room in which mamma had lived, the room in which she had died, the window from which she used to look, the very mirror that used to reflect back her beautiful and beloved face—­ah, if it could only have kept what it reflected!—­and papa to have given all this away to another woman!  Poor mamma! no wonder she was unhappy.  What could she, Leam, do to prevent all this wickedness if the blessed ones were idle and would not help her?

Her eyes fell on a bottle placed on the console where madame’s night appliances were ranged—­her night-light and the box of matches, her Bible and a hymn-book, a tablespoon, a carafe full of water and a tumbler, and this bottle marked “Cherry-water—­one tablespoonful for a dose.”  In madame’s handwriting underneath stood, “For my troublesome heart.”  Only about two tablespoonsful were left.

Leam took the bottle in one hand, the other thrust itself mechanically into her hair.  No one was about, and the house was profoundly still, save for the voices coming up from the room below in a subdued and not unpleasant murmur, with now and then the child’s shrill babble breaking in through the deeper tones like occasional notes in a sonata.  Out of doors were all the pleasant sights and sounds of the peaceful evening coming on after the labors of the busy day.  The birds were calling to each other in the woods before nesting for the night; the homing rooks flew round and round their trees, cawing loudly; the village dogs barked their welcome to their masters as they came off the fields and the day’s work; and the setting sun dyed the autumn leaves a brighter gold, a deeper crimson, a richer russet.  It was all so peaceful, all so happy, in this soft mild evening of the late September—­all seemed so full of promise, so eloquent of future joy, to those who had just begun their new career.