Miracle Gold (Vol. 2 of 3) A Novel

When the girl was alone and in good spirits, she often laughed aloud at these phantom suitors of this imaginary young lady lodger in Grimsby Street. She did not look on them with the pity of disdain. She regarded them as actors in a play. She summoned them for her amusement and dismissed them without emotion, without even thanks for the entertainment which they had afforded her.

On stepping out of the world of dreams into the world of reality what had happened?

This man, this deformed, odious little man, whose bread she was to eat for hire and whose money she was to take for services under his roof, had paid her attentions! forced his hateful attentions upon her! attempted to kiss her after an acquaintance of a few hours!

Good Heavens! Had she, Edith Grace, lived to see that day? Had it come to this with her? Had she fallen so low? Had she suffered such degradation and lived?

It was not the young lady lodger in Grimsby Street of her imagination, who had been compelled to listen to the ridiculous suits of the clerk, and the caterer, and the carpet-beater, and the baker, and the tailor of her fancy, but she herself, Edith Grace, who had had love offered to her by this miserable creature who was her master also!

Yet she had lived through it, and the house, Eltham House, had not fallen down on them, nor had the ground opened and swallowed them, and neither her grandmother herself nor Leigh seemed to realise the enormity of the crime!

Even if she had been the young lady of her imagination, and the young men of her fancy had taken flesh and done this thing, it would be unendurable degradation. What had occurred had been endured, although to reason a thing infinitely less seemed unendurable! In pity's name, had all that had taken place happened to her, Edith Grace?