"She told me herself," said Alice, "of her behaving ill another time, about her mother's letter."
"Yes that was another time. I wish you'd seen her!"
"I believe she saw and felt her fault in that case. Didn't she ask your pardon? she said she would."
"Yes," said Miss Fortune, drily "after a fashion."
"Oh, she's well enough she's sitting up. You can go up and see her."
"I will, directly," said Alice. "But now, Miss Fortune, I am going to ask a favour of you will you do me a great pleasure?"
"If you think Ellen has been sufficiently punished for her ill-behaviour if you do not think it right to withhold her letter still will you let me have the pleasure of giving it to her? I should take it as a great favour to myself."
Miss Fortune made no kind of reply to this, but stalked out of the room, and in a few minutes stalked in again with the letter, which she gave to Alice, only saying shortly
"It came to me in a letter from her father."
"You are willing she should have it?" said Alice.
Alice now went softly up stairs. She found Ellen's door a little ajar, and looking in, could see Ellen seated in a rocking-chair between the door and the fire, in her double gown, and with her hymn-book in her hand. It happened that Ellen had spent a good part of that afternoon in crying for her lost letter; and the face that she turned to the door, on hearing some slight noise outside, was very white and thin indeed. And though it was placid, too, her eye searched the crack of the door with a keen wistfulness that went to Alice's heart. But as the door was gently pushed open, and the eye caught the figure that stood behind it, the sudden and entire change of expression took away all her powers of speech. Ellen's face became radiant; she rose from her chair, and as Alice came silently in, and kneeling down to be near her, took her in her arms, Ellen put both hers round Alice's neck, and laid her face there; one was too happy and the other too touched, to say a word.
"My poor child!" was Alice's first expression.
"No, I ain't," said Ellen, tightening the squeeze of her arms round Alice's neck; "I am not poor at all now."
Alice presently rose, sat down in the rocking-chair, and took Ellen in her lap; and Ellen rested her head on her bosom, as she had been wont to do of old time on her mother's.