Letty lifted the latch almost too softly for her to have heard
had she been awake; but on the door-step Letty, had she been
capable of listening, might have heard her snoring.
When the young woman awoke in the cold gray of the morning, and
came to herself, compunction seized her. Opening the door softly,
she went out and searched everywhere; then, having discovered no
trace of Letty, left the door unlocked, and went to bed, hoping
she might yet find her way into the house before Mrs. Wardour was
down.
When that lady awoke at the usual hour, and heard no sound of
stir, she put on her dressing-gown, and went, in the anger of a
housekeeper, to Letty's room: there, to her amazement and horror,
she saw the bed had lain all the night expectant. She hurried
thence to the room occupied by the girl who was the cause of the
mischief. Roused suddenly by the voice of her mistress, she got
up half awake, and sleepy-headed; and, assailed by a torrent of
questions, answered so, in her confusion, as to give the
initiative to others: before she was well awake, she had told all
she had seen from the window, but nothing of what she had herself
done. Mrs. Wardour hurried to the kitchen, found the door on the
latch, believed everything and much more, went straight to her
son's room, and, in a calm rage, woke him up, and poured into his
unwilling ears a torrent of mingled fact and fiction, wherein
floated side by side with Letty's name every bad adjective she
could bring the lips of propriety to utter.
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