Ere long her worn look, thin cheek, and weary eye began to work on
the heart of lady Margaret, and she relented in spirit towards the
favourite of her husband, whose anticipated disappointment in her
had sharpened the arrows of her resentment. But to the watery dawn
of favour which followed, the poor girl could not throw wide her
windows, knowing it arose from no change in lady Margaret's judgment
concerning her: she could not as a culprit accept what had been as a
culprit withdrawn from her. The conviction burned in her heart like
cold fire, that, but for compassion upon the desolate state of an
orphan, she would have been at once dismissed from the castle.
Sometimes she ventured to think that if lord Herbert had been at
home, all this would not have happened; but now what could she
expect other than that on his return he would regard her and treat
her in the same way as his wife and father and brother?
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DELIVERER.
But she found some relief in applying her mind to the task which
lord Worcester had set her; and many a night as she tossed sleepless
on her bed, would she turn from the thoughts that tortured her, to
brood upon the castle, and invent if she might some new possible
way, however difficult, of getting out of it unseen: and many a
morning after the night thus spent, would she hasten, ere the
household was astir, to examine some spot which had occurred to her
as perhaps containing the secret she sought.
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