A Broken Blossom Vol. 1 of 3 by Florence Marryat

As soon as he had disappeared, I sat down in my chair and began to think. I might just as well do it then as at any other time. There was nothing for me to do. All my occupation seemed gone for ever. It would have been better if I had been one of the housemaids who were beating up the bed on which she died, with so much cheerful energy; or if I had had a little brother or sister, any one dependent on me, for whom I should have been obliged to order meals and bestir myself to amuse or to attend to. But my time was too much my own. Mrs. Medlicott, in deference to my loss, sent up my dinner even without the least reference to me. I had not the poor distraction of annoyance or trouble to divert my thoughts from the great void that had been suddenly made in my life. So I sat with my head buried in my hands, and pondered upon St. Pucelle. The idea of going there, although not positively agreeable, attracted me more than any that had passed through my brain yet. Naturally, I had thought a little of my future. In the pauses when grief had spent itself, and I had wept till I was in a state of insensibility to everything, I had more than once wondered, in a dull sort of way, what was to become of me; but, as I had told Mr. Warrington, whether I went into a convent or on the stage was a matter of perfect indifference. All I wanted was to change my outward surroundings: not to be obliged every morning to pass the closed bedroom door which I had been accustomed to enter with an affectionate greeting; not to have to sit down at the same table where a chair had always been placed opposite to mine, and eat my meals in solitude; not, in fact, to have my heart torn every minute by those seeming ‘nothings' which make up the happiness or the misery of every human life.

St. Pucelle could have no power to remind me of all this, although I knew that in my inmost heart I should never forget it. But there I should be in a totally new country-amongst a set of strangers-far from everything connected with the bitter suffering I was undergoing now.