A Waif's Progress by Rhoda Broughton — Read

All was safe. There had been no change of plan on the part of Miss Ransome's protectors, as, drawing a long breath, she realized on reaching home, and joyfully found the house as destitute of its masters as she had left it. To begin at once the attack upon the servants' clemency was her next care. Bonnybell had always been charming in her manner towards all dependants; but the tone in which she now asked the butler after a sick wife whom Camilla had been doctoring, and told the housemaid, whom she found lighting her bedroom fire, how concerned she was to hear her still coughing, would have wiled "the savageness out of a bear."

Her neglected studies were her next thought, but an unconquerable distaste towards resuming them made her persuade herself that it would be unsafe to run the risk of being found studying at so unusual an hour, and would lead to the inference that she had been playing the truant earlier. It would be better to take the least evadable books up to bed with her, and make what scrambling preparation she could before going to sleep. While collecting her authors, the young student became aware of "L'Enigme du Péché" lying in tell-tale openness on the floor, where it had evidently lain since it fell off her lap in the hurry of her departure. Another sigh of relief, almost as deep as the first, signalized this timely discovery.