My lonely life had made me shrink from all human creatures, except
the two wretches with whom I lived; and when the few neighbours would
have shown me some kindness, I ran from them in wild, unreasoning
terror."
"Strange!" muttered the police-officer.
"Yes; a strange history, is it not?" returned Lady Eversleigh. "And you
wonder, no doubt, to hear of such a childhood from the lips of Sir
Oswald Eversleigh's widow. One day I heard a neighbour reproaching the
man with his cruel treatment of me. 'It is bad enough to have stolen
the child,' he said; 'you shouldn't beat her as well.' From that hour I
knew that I was a stolen child. I told him as much one night, and the
next morning he took me to Naples, where, in the most obscure and yet
most crowded part of the city, I lived for some years. 'Nobody will
trouble himself about you here, my young princess,' my tyrant said to
me. 'Children swarm by hundreds in all the alleys; you will only be one
more drop of water in the ocean.'"
There was a pause, during which Honoria sat in a meditative attitude,
with her eyes fixed upon vacancy. It seemed as if she was looking back
into the shadowy past.
"I cannot tell you how wretched my life was for some time. Andrinetta
had accompanied us to Naples; and soon I saw she was very ill, and she
had fits of violence that approached insanity. Within doors she was my
sole companion.
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