I was awakened one morning, in the fourth week of my sojourn in captivity, by the sound of chimes long familiar to my ear, the duplicate of which I had not supposed to be in existence.  At first I feared it was some mirage of the ear, so to speak, instead of eye, that reflected back that fairy melody, which had rung its accompaniment to my whole childhood and youth; but, when, after the lapse of seven days, it was repeated, I became convinced that its reality was unquestionable, and that neither impatience nor indignation had so impaired my senses as to reproduce those sounds through the medium of a fevered imagination.

Were these delicious bells, a recent addition to the cupola of our grim asylum, bestowed by some benevolent hand that sought to mark and lend enchantment to the holy Sabbath-day—­even for the sake of the irresponsible ones within its walls—­or was I indeed—?  But of this there could be no question—­I dared not hazard such conjecture lest it drive me mad in reality—­I must not!

I groped in thick darkness, and time itself was only measured now by those sweet chimes, so like our own, and yet so far away.  My very clock one morning was found to have stopped, and was not again repaired or set in motion.  Papers I never saw, had never seen since I came to dwell in shadow, save that single one so ostentatiously spread before me, announcing the loss of the Kosciusko and her passengers—­a refinement of cruelty, on the part of those who sent it, worthy of a Japanese.

Rafts had been launched and lost, the survivors stated (the men who had seized the long-boat, to the exclusion of the women and children); the sea had swallowed all the remainder.  A later statement might refute the first, but even then none could know the truth with regard to my identity, for would not Basil Bainrothe control the publication as he pleased, and make me dead if he listed—­dead even after the rescue?

Yet Hope would sometimes whisper in her daring moods; “All this shall pass away, and be as it had not been.  Be of good heart, Miriam, and do not let them kill you; live for Mabel—­live for Wentworth!”

Then, with bowed head, and silent, streaming tears, my soul would climb in prayer to the footstool of the Most High, and the grace, which had never come to me before, fell over me like a mantle in this sad extremity.

CHAPTER VI.

Unfaltering in her respectful demeanor toward me was Mrs. Clayton from the time of the little scene I have recently described.  What new and sudden light had broken in upon her I never knew, but I supposed at the time that the flash of conviction had gone home to her mind with regard to the baseness of Bainrothe and the iniquity of his proceedings, founded on the fear I had expressed of his solitary presence, and the insight she had gained into my character.