"I mind, Miss Jennie--I mean my Lady Jane."
"No, you're to call me Jennie still, or I'll drop Donnie Don, and call you Mrs. Gwynn," said Lady Jane, with her hands on Donica's thin shoulders, playfully, but with a very pensive face and tone.
Donica smiled for a moment, and then her face saddened too, and she said--
"And I mind, Miss Jennie, when it was the same way with me, only with better reason, for I was older than you, and had lived longer than ever you did without a thought of God; but I tell you, miss, you'll find your only comfort there at last; it is not much, maybe, to the like o' me, that can't lay her mind down to it, but it's _some_think; ay, I mind the time I durst not open it, thinking I'd only meet summat there to vex me. But 'tisn't so: there's a deal o' good nature in the Bible, and ye'll be sure to stumble on somethink kind whenever you open it."
Lady Jane made no answer. She looked down with a careworn gaze on her white hand, the fleeting tenement of clay; jewelled rings glimmered on its fingers--the vanities of the world, and under it lay the Bible, the eternal word. She was patting the volume with a little movement that made the brilliants flash. You would have thought she was admiring her rings, but that her eyes were so sad and her gaze so dreamy.
"And I hear the mistress, Lady Alice, a-coming up--yes, 'tis her voice. Good-night, Miss Jennie, dear."
"And you'll promise me you'll read a bit in it every night."
"Where's the use in promising, Donnie? Don't we promise everything--the whole Christian religion, at our baptism--and how do we keep it?"
"You must promise you'll read, if 'twas only a verse every night, Miss Jennie, dear--it may be the makin' o' ye. I hear Lady Alice a-calling."
"You're a good old thing--I like you, Donnie--you'd like to make me better--happier, that is--and I love you--and I promise for this night, at all events, I will read a verse, and maybe more, if it turns out good-natured, as you say. Good-night."
And she shook old Gwynn by both hands, and kissed her; and as she parted with her, said--
"And, Donnie, you must tell my maid I shan't want her to-night--and I _will_ read, Donnie--and now, good-night again."
"It seems to me as if I had not time to think--God help me, God help me," said Lady Jane. "Shall I read it? That odious book, that puts impossibilities before us, and calls eternal damnation eternal justice!"