Lydia Trent Read Online Free PDF Page A

knitting to keep herself awake. It was almost two of the
clock, and there was barely a sound except the soft breathing of the
patient, and the rather more stertorian exhalations of the nurse, who
lay within call on a couch in the next room. There was little to do
until her father's next dose, at three, and Lydia began to find
herself drifting into a reverie.

    Her
thoughts were carried forward into the dreary future, and she began
to bethink herself of what might become of her. Without her father,
all that made home a bright and happy place would perish. To be sure,
there was still her sister, but she had begun to see how the land lay
between Alfred and Adeline, and she was sure that before very long
Adeline would depart to a home of her own. What then? The thought of
living in solitude with her stepmother was not to be borne, and
though she might be assured of a home with her sister and
brother-in-law, playing the gooseberry may soon pall. The idea that
she may marry herself had never crossed her mind – simple duties,
simple pleasures, were all she had looked to as her happiness in
life, she had never yet been disturbed by longings for romantic
passion. Good books, good work, and lively and intelligent
conversation with a congenial mind, such as she had enjoyed with her
father, were her ideal of a happy life. Not for the first time, she
wished she had been born a man, or at least a poor woman – for
though not an heiress she would yet inherit a couple of thousands
which would ensure her a comfortable, if not extravagant, income. She
longed to have some work to go to, where she might be of the world
and in the world – to be a lawyer, a doctor, a writer, even to go
out as a governess or a nurse, to bring her able mind into contact
with other intelligent souls. To spend her life mewed up here with
her knitting, and her stepmother's bitter complaints and monotonous
converse, was a doom the most awful to her, though she would face it
cheerfully enough, and none should ever know how she longed to break
out.

    Lydia
was awoken from this dismal train of thought by a slight sound, as of
a door closing. Had she not known that it was her stepmother's
nightly habit to lock and bar every door and window in the house,
before retiring, she would have sworn to it having been the 'snick'
of the latch of the garden door.

    She
had just made sure of the sound that disturbed her having been a
loose coal in the fireplace, and taken up her knitting, which had
fallen unregarded in her lap, with renewed energy, when she became
conscous of a stealthy tread on the stair outside the room, and a
faint rustle, like the whispering of a silk dress, in the passageway
beyond the closed door.

    On
a bold impulse, she sprang to the door, candle in hand, and opened it
to confront her stepmother, cloaked and carrying a pair of walking
shoes which were damp with dew, passing to her bedroom a few doors
beyond that of the sick man.

    “ Why,
Mamma!” said Lydia in surprise, gently pulling the sickroom door to
behind her, lest she disturb the sleepers within, “Whatever is the
matter? What keeps you abroad so late?”

    “ I
cannot see,” said Evelyn, with some asperity, “what concern my
movements can possibly have for you.”

    “ None
at all, Mamma, only you surprised me so. I had been sure you had
retired to bed hours ago.”

    “ If
an explanation will give you any satisfaction, then perhaps I should
beg to inform you that I found myself stuffy and unable to sleep, so
I took a couple of turns on the terrace (for so she designated the
broad gravel walk behind the house) in the hopes that a breath of
fresh air would refresh and tire me. Finding that it has had the
desired effect, I wish you would allow me to retire. And I might
remark, young lady, that in my younger days, it was not thought
proper for a young person to question the comings and goings of her
elders.”

    “ Of
course Mamma, I did not mean to be impertinent. I bid you