Page:The Wanderer (1814 Volume 3).pdf/146

 quire whether Miss Pierson, who had told him that she was ill, found herself worse. Flora, hastily checking her mirth, answered that her head ached, and she would lie down; and then spoke no more.

The shop-man made an attempt to enter into conversation with Juliet; but she gravely requested that he would be so good as to order a smith to open the lock of her door.

He ought not, he said, to leave the house in the absence of Miss Matson; but he would run the risk for the pleasure of obliging her, if she would only step down into the shop, to answer to the bell or the knocker.

To this, in preference to being shut out of her room, she would immediately have consented, but that she feared the arrival of Sir Lyell Sycamore. She asked the shop-man, therefore, if there were any objection to her waiting in the little parlour.

None in the world, he answered; for