Page:010 Once a week Volume X Dec 1863 to Jun 64.pdf/674

 by dinner-time, at that rate,” she cried. And, taking hold of the drawer with her own hands, she pulled it completely out, and turned it upside down on the carpet. The sheet of newspaper laid at the bottom was shaken out with the rest of the contents.

“Now then, put them back,” said Laura.

“You’ll soon see whether I tell you truth, in saying the sleeves are not there.”

Sarah suppressed her passion; she might not give way to it if she cared to keep her place. She snatched up the sheet of paper, gave it a violent shake, which might be set down to either zeal in the cause or anger, as her mistress pleased, and then stooped to pick up the lace articles. Lady Laura stood by watching the process, in anticipation of her own triumph and Sarah’s discomfiture.

“Now, pray, are the sleeves there?” she demanded, when so few things remained on the floor that there could be no doubt upon the point.

“My lady, all I can say is, that I have neither touched nor seen the sleeves. I remember the sleeves, it’s true; but I can’t remember when they were worn last, or what dress they were worn in. If I took them out of the dress after they were used, I should put them nowhere but here.”

“Do you suppose I lost them off my arms?” retorted Lady Laura.

Sarah did not say what she supposed, but she looked as though she would like to say a great deal, and not of the civilest. As she whirled the last article off the floor, which happened to be a black lace scarf, Lady Laura saw what appeared to be a part of a note, that had been lying underneath the things. She caught it up as impatiently as her maid had caught up the scarf, and far more eagerly; the writing on it, seen distinctly, was arousing all the curiosity and amazement that her mind possessed.

She forgot the lost sleeves, she forgot her anger at Sarah, she forgot her excitement; or, rather, the one source of excitement was merged into another, and she sat down with the piece of paper in her hand.

It was the commencement of a letter, written, as Laura believed, to her sister Jane, and was dated from London the 28th of the past February. The lower part of the note had been torn off, only the commencement of the letter and its conclusion on the reverse side being left. Laura knew the handwriting as well as she knew her own: it was that of her sister Clarice.

“I did not think Jane could have been so sly!” she exclaimed at length. “Protesting to me, as she did, that Clarice had not written to her since New Year’s Day. What could be her motive for the denial?”

Laura sat on, the paper in her hand, and lost herself in thought. The affair, trifling as it was, puzzled her excessively; the few words on the note puzzled her, Jane’s conduct in denying that she had heard, puzzled her. She had always deemed her sister the very essence of truth.

“People are sure to get found out,” she exclaimed, with a laugh at her own words.

“Jane little thought when she was packing my things to send to me that she dropped this memento amongst them. I’ll keep it to convict her.”

In turning to reach her desk she was confronted by Sarah, with the missing sleeves in her hand.

“I found them folded in your watered silk gown, my lady, in the deep drawer,” said the girl as pertly as she might venture to speak.

“I did not put them there.”

A sudden conviction came over Laura that she had put them there herself one day when she was in a hurry, and she was generous enough to acknowledge it. She showed the maid where to place certain black ribbons that she wished to have attached to them, and again turned to her desk. As the girl retired, Mr. Carlton’s step was heard upon the stairs. Laura thrust the torn paper within her desk and locked it again, before he should come in, but he only went to the drawing-room.

A feeling, which Laura had never given herself the trouble to analyse, but which had no doubt its rise in pride, had prevented her ever speaking to her husband of her sister Clarice. Naturally proud and haughty, the characteristics of the Chesney family, she had not cared to confess to him, “I have a sister who is out in the world as a governess.”

When they—she and Mr. Carlton—should again be brought into contact with her family, as she supposed they should be sometime, and Mr. Carlton should find that there was another sister, whom he had not seen or heard of, it would be easy to say, “Oh, Clarice was from home during papa’s residence at South Wennock.” It would not be correct to assert that Lady Laura Carlton deliberately planned this little matter, touching upon the future; she did not, but the outline of it floated through her mind in an under current. Thus she never spoke of her sister Clarice, and Mr. Carlton had not the faintest suspicion that she had ever possessed one of that name. Laura supposed that Clarice was back at home with them long before this, and when she looked in the “Morning Post,” or other journal giving space to the announcement of what are called fashionable move-