She roused to a bewildered half-consciousness of something unusual;
what was it, good or ill? What had happened before she went to sleep?
Then came the recollection of those delightful letters from papa and
Russell, confiding to her disposal those precious slips of paper
which represented so much; oh! what a pleasure it was to have the
power of doing so much good; then with a shock came the remembrance
of that other letter, and those two or three first lines, which
seemed to have burned themselves upon her eyes as she read.
"DEAR LENA,
"I am in the most awful scrape any one was ever in, and you are the
only one who can help me out of it. If you can't, there is nothing for
me but to be arrested and awfully disgraced, with all the rest of the
family too, and the--"
This was as far as Lena had read when Hannah's returning footsteps
had impelled her to put the letter out of sight; but it had been
enough in her weak state to startle her out of her self-control, and
it has been seen what a shock it gave her. "Arrested" had a terrible
significance to Lena.
Not very long before Mrs. Neville's family had left home, Lena had
seen a boy, about her brother Percy's age, arrested in the streets of
London. He had been taken up for some grave misdemeanor, and having
violently resisted his captors, they had found it necessary to
handcuff him, and when Lena saw him he was being forced along between
two policemen, still fiercely struggling, and with his face and
hands covered with blood.
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