slept."

I expressed my confidence in the effects of time and kindness.

"If she were to take a fancy to anybody in the house, she would soon
settle; but not till then," replied Mrs. Bretton.




CHAPTER II.

PAULINA.


Some days elapsed, and it appeared she was not likely to take much of
a fancy to anybody in the house. She was not exactly naughty or
wilful: she was far from disobedient; but an object less conducive to
comfort--to tranquillity even--than she presented, it was scarcely
possible to have before one's eyes. She moped: no grown person could
have performed that uncheering business better; no furrowed face of
adult exile, longing for Europe at Europe's antipodes, ever bore more
legibly the signs of home sickness than did her infant visage. She
seemed growing old and unearthly. I, Lucy Snowe, plead guiltless of
that curse, an overheated and discursive imagination; but whenever,
opening a room-door, I found her seated in a corner alone, her head in
her pigmy hand, that room seemed to me not inhabited, but haunted.

And again, when of moonlight nights, on waking, I beheld her figure,
white and conspicuous in its night-dress, kneeling upright in bed, and