"
Mrs. Loveday departed, having certainly cheered the captive, and
Aurelia rose, weary-limbed and sad-hearted, with a patient trust in
her soul that Love Divine would not fail her, and that earthly love
would do its best.
She found matters improved in the down-stairs room, the furniture was
in order, a clean cloth on the table, a white roll, butter, and above
all clean bright implements, showing Mrs. Loveday's influence. She
ate and drank like a hungry girl, washed up for herself rather than
let Madge touch anything she could help, and looked from the window
into a dull court of dreary, blighted-looking turf divided by flagged
walks, radiating from a statue in the middle, representing a Triton
blowing a conch--no doubt intended to spout water, for there was a
stone trough round him, but he had long forgotten his functions, and
held a sparrow's nest with streaming straws in his hand. This must
be the prison-yard, where alone she might walk, since it lay at the
back of the house; and with a sense of depression she turned to the
task that awaited her.
A very large foreign-looking case had been partly opened, and when
she looked in she was appalled at the task to be accomplished in one
day. It was crammed with shells of every size and description, from
the large helmet-conch and Triton's trumpet, down to the tiny pink
cowry and rice-volute, all stuffed together without arrangement or
packing, forming a mass in which the unbroken shells reposed in a
kind of sand, of _debris_ ground together out of the victims; and
when she took up a tolerably-sized univalve, quantities of little
ones came tumbling out of its inner folds.
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