Poor Lady Jane!
Bed-time came at last--horrible bed-time, with all its terrors! At
first Kate persuaded Josephine and her light to stay till sleep came
to put an end to them; but Lady Barbara came up one evening, declared
that a girl of eleven years old must not be permitted in such
childish nonsense, and ordered Josephine to go down at once, and
always to put out the candle as soon as Lady Caergwent was in bed.
Lady Barbara would hardly have done so if she had known how much
suffering she caused; but she had always been too sensible to know
what the misery of fancies could be, nor how the silly little brain
imagined everything possible and impossible; sometimes that thieves
were breaking in--sometimes that the house was on fire--sometimes
that she should be smothered with pillows, like the princes in the
Tower, for the sake of her title--sometimes that the Gunpowder Plot
would be acted under the house!
Most often of all it was a thought that was not foolish and unreal
like the rest. It was the thought that the Last Judgment might be
about to begin. But Kate did not use that thought as it was meant to
be used when we are bidden to "watch." If she had done so, she would
have striven every morning to "live this day as if the last." But
she never thought of it in the morning, nor made it a guide to her
actions; or else she would have dreaded it less. And at night it did
not make her particular about obedience.
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