Christian had made hers, built her castle in Spain, and furnished and
adorned it from basement to battlement, even when she was a girl of
fourteen. Sitting night after night alone, listening for the father's
footstep, and then trembling when she heard it, or hidden away up in
her own bedroom, her sole refuge from the orgies that took place
below, where the sound of music, exquisite music, went up like the cry
of an angel imprisoned in a den of brutes, the girl had imagined it all.
And through every vicissitude, hidden closer for its utter contrast to all
the associations and experience of her daily life, Christian Oakley had
kept in her heart its innocent, womanly ideal of home.
Now, she had the reality. And what was it?
Externally it looked _very_ bright. Peeping into that warm, crimson-
tinted dining-room at the hour between dinner and tea, when the whole
family at the lodge were sure to be assembled there, any body would
say what a happy family it was, and what a pleasant picture it made.
Father and mother at either end of the table; children on both sides of it;
and the two elderly aunts seated comfortably in their two arm-chairs at
the fireside, one knitting--_q. e. d._--, sleeping, the other--
No. Miss Gascoigne never slept.
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