The Maid of Maiden Lane

And in the midst of the De Lancey lamentation, seven o'clock struck and Cornelia began to listen for the shutting of the garden gate, and the sound of Hyde's step upon the flagged walk. It did not come as soon as she hoped it would, and the minutes went slowly on until eight struck. Then the doctor was glooming and nodding, and waking up and saying a word or two, and relapsing again into semi-unconsciousness. She felt that the favourable hour had passed, and now the minutes went far too quickly. Why did he net come? With her work in her hand-making laborious stitches by a drawn thread--she sat listening with all her being. The street itself was strangely silent, no one passed, and the fitful talk at the fireside seemed full of fatality; she could feel the influence, though she did not inquire of her heart what it was, of what it might signify.

Half-past eight! She looked up and caught her mother's eyes, and the trouble and question in them, and the needle going through the fine muslin, seemed to go through her heart. At nine the watching became unbearable. She said softly "I must go to bed. I am tired;" but she put away with her usual neatness her work, and her spools of thread, her thimble and her scissors. Her movement in the room roused the doctor thoroughly. He stood up, stretched his arms outward and upward, and said "he believed he had been sleeping, and must ask their pardon for his indifference." And then he walked to the window and looking out added "It is a lovely night but the moon looks like storm. Oh!"--and he turned quickly with the exclamation--"I forgot to tell you that I heard a strange report to-day, nothing less than that General Hyde returned on the Mary Pell this morning, bringing with him a child."

"A child!" said Mrs. Moran.

"A girl, then, a little mite of a creature. Mrs. Davy told me the Captain carried her in his arms to the carriage which took them to Hyde Manor."

"And how should Mrs. Davy know?"

"The Davys live next door to the Pells, and the servants of one house carried the news to the other house. She said the General sent to his son's lodging to see if he was in town, but he was not. It was then only eight o'clock in the morning."

"How unlikely such a story is! Do you believe it?"

"Ask to-morrow. As for me, I neither know nor care. That is the report. Who can tell what the Hydes will do?"