The Halifax Comet. — 1894-09-01 (Halifax, West Yorkshire, England)

THE COMET.  the mind diseased" of a young girl. Nurse Drusilla Relton was an almost ladylike person of about thirty-six or seven, rather handsome than otherwise, with a fresh colour, abundant brown hair, and light hazel eyes. She was not above the medium height, and her figure, plump and well made now, might become stout in middle age. At present her whole appearance was more than pleasing, and her manner respectful without servility. Dr. Locksley scanned her very keenly, as he did all new corners; but it was one of his veiled looks he gave her; neither she,nor anyone else, would suppose he was taking any special notice of her. He asked her a few questions, principally about her late patient, and she answered frankly and concisely, with no needless digressions. Miss Glen-Mars had been once or twice in the sick room when Mrs. Lesmore was first ill; but Mrs. Lesmore—this the nurse said with some hesitation, glancing at her master—had not cared for Miss Glen-Mars, and the young lady did not like her aunt. Dr. Locksley soon dismissed the nurse. He had really sent for her because he wanted to see everyone in any way connected with this case, rather than because he had at present any important questions to put to her. "Shall I see your niece now ?" he said, to Mr. Lesmore, and, declining a proffered glass of wine, he followed Arnold Glen-Mars to the library, a large room facing the front of the house, handsomely furnished, and with wellfilled bookshelves. Locksley went and stood by the mantelpiece—a favourite position of his perhaps because it was such a vantage point, awaiting his patient. A girl, not nineteen, a murderess! Well, that was abnormal, but not impossible. "Such things be, and will again." What if this were one of those frightful cases of morbid propensity, moral obliquity! What if he—Vere Locksley— should have no hope. no comfort, to give to the relation?of this unhappy young creature? A half-hesitating touch on the door handle! It turned—the door opened slowly—and a young girl came in, and, closing the door without looking up, stood still, lifting her face with a swift, fleeting glance at the physician, and a burning rush of colour to her brow, which faded quickly to deadly pallor. She was a tall, slender, graceful girl, looking not even her nineteen years, and so fragile in appearance that she seemed more like a vision than a creature of flesh and blood. Her face was of singular beauty, though its character was too ethereal to be consistent with health of mind or body; a low, broad, imaginative brow; straight black eyebrows ; beneath them large luminous eyes of true violet blue, with lashes so long and thick, that when they drooped the eyes looked black under their shadow. Wistful, passionate eyes they were, full of unutterable pain; pain about the lines of the curved lips— lips sweet and tender, mobile without weakness. But never had Vera Locksley, in a wide experience of human suffering, seen such despair in a human face, and it was the face of almost a child in years, who had childhood's purity on her brow, the grace of childhood in her mien. The mourning dress the girl wore enhanced the marble paleness of her face, and heightened the effect of her hair, which was of a ruddy chestnut hue, and Clustered over her head and above her brow in rich waves and curls, falling in careless abundance on her shoulaers. Locksley advanced to meet her, as she stood shrinking, and almost cowering, by the door.