and a light blue hat with a red feather, with three guineas which Rebecca gave her, and as little Sharp was by no means too liberal with her money, no doubt it was for services rendered that Betty Martin was so bribed.
On the second day after Sir Pitt Crawley's offer to Miss Sharp, the sun rose as usual, and at the usual hour Betty Martin, the upstairs maid, knocked at the door of the governess's bed-chamber.
No answer was returned, and she knocked again. Silence was still uninterrupted; and Betty, with the hot water, opened the door and entered the chamber.
The little white dimity bed was as smooth and trim as on the day previous when Betty's own hands had helped to make it. Two little trunks were corded in one end of the room; and on the table before the window—on the pincushion—the great fat pincushion lined with pink inside, and twilled like a lady's nightcap—lay a letter. It had been reposing there probably all night.
Betty advanced towards it on tiptoe, as if she were afraid to awake it—looked at it, and round the room with an air of great wonder and satisfaction, took up the letter, and grinned intensely as she turned it round and over, and finally carried it in to Miss Briggs's room below.
How could Betty tell that the letter was for Miss Briggs, I should like to know? All the schooling Betty had was at Mrs. Bute Crawley's Sunday School, and she could no more read writing than Hebrew.
"La, Miss Briggs," the girl exclaimed, "O, Miss, something must have happened—there's nobody in Miss Sharp's room; the bed aint been slep in, and she've run away, and left this letter for you, Miss."
"What!" cries Briggs, dropping her comb, the thin wisp of faded hair falling over her shoulders; "an elopement! Miss Sharp a fugitive! What, what is this?" and she eagerly broke the neat seal, and, as they say, "devoured the contents" of the letter addressed to her.
"Dear Miss Briggs," the refugee wrote, "the kindest heart in the world as yours is, will pity and sympathise with me and excuse me. With tears, and prayers, and blessings, I leave the home where the poor orphan has ever met with kindness and affection. Claims even superior to those of my benefactress call me hence. I go to my duty—to my husband. Yes, I am married. My husband commands me to seek the humble home which we call ours. Dearest Miss Briggs, break the news as your delicate sympathy will know how to do it—to my dear, my beloved friend and benefactress. Tell her, ere I went, I shed tears on her dear pillow—that pillow that I have so often soothed in sickness—that I long again to watch—Oh, with what joy shall I return to dear Park Lane! How I tremble for the answer which is to seal my fate! When Sir Pitt deigned to offer me his hand, an honour of which my beloved Miss Crawley said I was deserving, (my blessings go with her for judging the poor orphan worthy to be her sister!), I told Sir Pitt that I was already a wife. Even he forgave me. But my courage failed me, when I should have told him all—that I could not be his wife, for I was his daughter! I am wedded to the best and most generous of men—Miss Crawley's Rawdon is my Rawdon. At his command I open my lips, and follow him to our humble home, as I would through the
