tell you, child; and if you want to have peace, keep out of his
way."

She left the room abruptly, and the orphan lay in the gathering
gloom of twilight, perplexed, distressed, and wondering how she
could avoid all the angularities of this amiable character, under
whose roof fate seemed to have deposited her.




CHAPTER V.


At length, by the aid of crutches, Edna was able to leave the room
where she had been so long confined, and explore the house in which
every day discovered some new charm. The parlors and sitting-room
opened on a long, arched veranda, which extended around two sides of
the building, and was paved with variegated tiles; while the
stained-glass doors of the dining-room, with its lofty frescoed
ceiling and deep bow-windows, led by two white marble steps out on
the terrace, whence two more steps showed the beginning of a
serpentine gravel walk winding down to an octagonal hot-house,
surmounted by a richly carved pagoda-roof. Two sentinel statues--a
Bacchus and Bacchante--placed on the terrace, guarded the entrance
to the dining-room; and in front of the house, where a sculptured
Triton threw jets of water into a gleaming circular basin, a pair of
crouching monsters glared from the steps. When Edna first found
herself before these grim doorkeepers, she started back in unfeigned
terror, and could scarcely repress a cry of alarm, for the howling