Not his the form, not his the eye,That youthful maidens wont to fly.
Not his the form, not his the eye,That youthful maidens wont to fly.
Not his the form, not his the eye,That youthful maidens wont to fly.
Miss Bethune was no youthful maiden, but this sudden apparition had a great effect upon her. The sight made her start, and grow red and grow pale without any reason, like a young person in her teens.
“I beg your pardon,” said the young man, making a step back, and taking off his hat. This was clearly an afterthought, and due to her appearance, which was not that of the mistress of a lodging-house. “I wanted to ask after a ——”
“I am not the person of the house,” said Miss Bethune quickly.
“Might I ask you all the same? I would so much rather hear from some one who knows him.”
Miss Bethune’s eyes had been fixed upon him with the closest attention, but her interest suddenly changed and dropped at the last word. “Him?” she said involuntarily, with a flash outof her eyes, and a look almost of disappointment, almost of surprise. What had she expected? She recovered in a moment the composure which had been disturbed by this stranger’s appearance, for what reason she only knew.
“I came,” he said, hesitating a little, and giving her another look, in which there was also some surprise and much curiosity, “to inquire about Mr. Mannering, who, I am told, lives here.”
“Yes, he lives here.”
“And has been ill?”
“And has been ill,” she repeated after him.
The young man smiled, and paused again. He seemed to be amused by these repetitions. He had a very pleasant face, not intellectual, not remarkable, but full of life and good-humour. He said: “Perhaps I ought not to trouble you; but if you know him, and his child——”
“I know him very well, and his child,—who is a child no longer, but almost grown up. He is slowly recovering out of a very long dangerous illness.”
“That is what we heard. I came, not for myself, but for a lady who takes a great interest. I think that she is a relation of—of Mr. Mannering’s late wife.”
“Is that woman dead, then?” Miss Bethune said. “I too take a great interest in the family. I shall be glad to tell you anything I know: but come with me into the Square, where we can talk at our ease.” She led him to a favourite seat under the shadow of a tree. Though it was in Bloomsbury, and the sounds of town were in theair, that quiet green place might have been far in the country, in the midst of pastoral acres. The Squares of Bloomsbury are too respectable to produce many children. There were scarcely even any perambulators to vulgarise this retreat. She turned to him as she sat down, and said again: “So that woman is dead?”
The young stranger looked surprised. “You mean Mrs. Mannering?” he said. “I suppose so, though I know nothing of her. May I say who I am first? My name is Gordon. I have just come from South America with Mrs. Bristow, the wife of my guardian, who died there a year ago. And it is she who has sent me to inquire.”
“Gordon?” said Miss Bethune. She had closed her eyes, and her head was going round; but she signed to him with her hand to sit down, and made a great effort to recover herself. “You will be of one of the Scotch families?” she said.
“I don’t know. I have never been in this country till now.”
“Born abroad?” she said, suddenly opening her eyes.
“I think so—at least—but, indeed, I can tell you very little about myself. It was Mrs. Bristow——”
“Yes, I know. I am very indiscreet, putting so many questions, but you reminded me of—of some one I once knew. Mrs. Bristow, you were saying?”
“She was very anxious to know something of Mr. Mannering and his child. I think she must be a relation of his late wife.”
“God be thanked if there is a relation that may be of use to Dora. She wants to know—what? If you were going to question the landlady, it would not be much——”
“I was to try to do exactly what I seem to have been so fortunate as to have done—to find some friend whom I could ask about them. I am sure you must be a friend to them?”
“How can you be sure of that, you that know neither them nor me?”
He smiled, with a very attractive, ingenuous smile. “Because you have the face of a friend.”
“Have I that? There’s many, many, then, that would have been the better for knowing it that have never found it out. And you are a friend to Mrs. Bristow on the other side?”
“A friend to her?—no, I am more like her son, yet not her son, for my own mother is living—at least, I believe so. I am her servant, and a little her ward, and—devoted to her,” he added, with a bright flush of animation and sincerity. Miss Bethune took no notice of these last words.
“Your mother is living, you believe? and don’t you know her, then? And why should you be ward or son to this other woman, and your mother alive?”
“Pardon me,” said the young man, “that is my story, and it is not worth a thought. The question is about Mrs. Bristow and the Mannerings. She is anxious about them, and she is very broken in health. And I think there is some family trouble there too, so that she can’t come in a natural straightforward way and make herself known tothem. These family quarrels are dreadful things.”
“Dreadful things,” Miss Bethune said.
“They are bad enough for those with whom they originate; but for those who come after, worse still. To be deprived of a natural friend all your life because of some row that took place before you were born!”
“You are a Daniel come to judgment,” said Miss Bethune, pale to her very lips.
“I hope,” he said kindly, “I am not saying anything I ought not to say? I hope you are not ill?”
“Go on,” she said, waving her hand. “About this Mrs. Bristow, that is what we were talking of. The Mannerings could not be more in need of a friend than they are now. He has been very ill. I hear it is very doubtful if he’ll ever be himself again, or able to go back to his occupation. And she is very young, nearly grown up, but still a child. If there was a friend, a relation, to stand up for them, now would be the very time.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I have been very fortunate in finding you, but I don’t think Mrs. Bristow can take any open step. My idea is that she must be a sister of Mrs. Mannering, and thus involved in the dissension, whatever it was.”
“It was more than a dissension, so far as I have heard,” Miss Bethune said.
“That is what makes it so hard. What she wishes is to see Dora.”
“Dora?”
“Indeed, I mean no disrespect. I have never known her by any other name. I have helped to pack boxes for her, and choose playthings.”
Miss Bethune uttered a sudden exclamation.
“Then it was from Mrs. Bristow the boxes came?”
“Have I let out something that was a secret? I am not very good at secrets,” he said with a laugh.
“She might be an aunt as you say:—an aunt would be a good thing for her, poor child:—or she might be—— But is it Dora only she wants to see?”
“Dora only; and only Dora if it is certain that she would entertain no prejudices against a relation of her mother.”
“How could there be prejudices of such a kind?”
“That is too much to say: but I know from my own case that there are,” the young man said.
“I would like to hear your own case.”
He laughed again. “You are very kind to be so much interested in a stranger: but I must settle matters for my kind guardian. She has not been a happy woman, I don’t know why,—though he was as good a man as ever lived:—and now she is in very poor health—oh, really ill. I scarcely thought I could have got her to England alive. To see Dora is all she seems to wish for. Help me, oh, help me to get her that gratification!” he cried.
Miss Bethune smiled upon him in reply, with an involuntary movement of her hands towardshim. She was pale, and a strange light was on her face.
“I will do that if I can,” she said. “I will do it if it is possible. If I help you what will you give me in return?”
The youth looked at her in mild surprise. He did not understand what she could mean. “Give you in return?” he asked, with astonishment.
“Ay, my young man, for my hire; everybody has a price, as I daresay you have heard said—which is a great lie, and yet true enough. Mine is not just a common price, as you will believe. I’m full of fancies, a—whimsical kind of a being. You will have to pay me for my goodwill.”
He rose up from the seat under the tree, and, taking off his hat again, made her a solemn bow. “Anything that is within my power I will gladly give to secure my good guardian what she wishes. I owe everything to her.”
Miss Bethune sat looking up at him with that light on her face which made it unlike everything that had been seen before. She was scarcely recognisable, or would have been to those who already knew her. To the stranger standing somewhat stiffly before her, surprised and somewhat shocked by the strange demand, it seemed that this, as he had thought, plain middle-aged woman had suddenly become beautiful.
He had liked her face at the first. It had seemed to him a friend’s face, as he had said. But now it was something more. The surprise, the involuntary start of repugnance from a woman, a lady, who boldly asked something in return forthe help she promised, mingled with a strange attraction towards her, and extraordinary curiosity as to what she could mean. To pay for her goodwill! Such a thing is, perhaps, implied in every prayer for help; gratitude at the least, if nothing more, is the pay which all the world is supposed to give for good offices: but one does not ask even for gratitude in words. And she was in no hurry to explain. She sat in the warm shade, with all the greenness behind, and looked at him as if she found somehow a supreme satisfaction in the sight—as if she desired to prolong the moment, and even his curiosity and surprise. He on his part was stiff, disturbed, not happy at all. He did not like a woman to let herself down, to show any wrong side of her, any acquisitiveness, or equivocal sentiment. What did she want of him? What had he to give? The thought seemed to lessen himself by reason of lessening her in his eyes.
“I tell you I am a very whimsical woman,” she said at length; “above all things I am fond of hearing every man’s story, and tracing out the different threads of life. It is my amusement, like any other. If I bring this lady to speech of Dora, and show her how she could be of real advantage to both the girl and her father, will you promise me to come to me another time, and tell me, as far as you know, everything that has happened to you since the day you were born?”
Young Gordon’s stiffness melted away. The surprise on his face, which had been mingled with annoyance, turned into mirth and pleasure.“You don’t know what you are bringing on yourself,” he said, “nothing very amusing. I have little in my own record. I never had any adventures. But if that is your fancy, surely I will, whenever you like, tell you everything that I know about myself.”
She rose up, with the light fading a little, but yet leaving behind it a sweetness which was not generally in Miss Bethune’s face. “Let your friend come in the afternoon at three any day—it is then her father takes his sleep—and ask for Miss Bethune. I will see that it is made all right. And as for you, you will leave me your address?” she said, going with him towards the gate. “You said you believed your mother was living—is your father living too?”
“He died a long time ago,” said the young man, and then added: “May I not know who it is that is standing our friend?”
Perhaps Miss Bethune did not hear him; certainly she let him out; and turned to lock the gate, without making any reply.
Dorahad now a great deal to do in her father’s room. The two nurses had at last been got rid of, to the great relief of all in the house except Mrs. Simcox, whose bills shrank back at once to their original level, very different from what they had been, and who felt herself, besides, to be reduced to quite a lower level in point of society, her thoughts and imaginations having been filled, as well as those of Janie and Molly, by tales of the hospitals and sick-rooms, which made them feel as if translated into a world where the gaiety of perfect health and constant exercise triumphed over every distress. Janie and Molly had both determined to be nurses in the enthusiasm created by these recitals. They turned their little nightcaps, the only things they had which could be so converted, into imitation nurses’ caps, and masqueraded in them in the spare moments when they could shut themselves into their little rooms and play at hospital. And the sitting-room downstairs returned for these young persons to its original dulness when the nurses went away. Dora was in her father’s room all day, and required a great deal of help from Jane, the maid-of-all-work, in bringing up and taking away the things that were wanted: and Gilchrist watched over him by night. There was a great deal ofbeef tea and chicken broth to be prepared—no longer the time and trouble saving luxuries of Brand’s Essence and turtle soup. He would have none of these luxuries now. He inquired into every expense, and rejected presents, and was angry rather than grateful when anything was done for him. What he would have liked would have been to have eaten nothing at all, to have passed over meal-times, and lived upon a glass of water or milk and a biscuit. But this could not be allowed; and Mrs. Simcox had now a great deal of trouble in cooking for him, whereas before she had scarcely any at all. Mr. Mannering, indeed, was not an amiable convalescent. The breaking up of all the habits of his life was dreadful to him. The coming back to new habits was more dreadful still. He thought with horror of the debts that must have accumulated while he was ill; and when he spoke of them, looked and talked as if the whole world had been in a conspiracy against him, instead of doing everything, and contriving everything, as was the real state of the case, for his good.
“Let me have my bills, let me have my bills; let me know how I stand,” he cried continually to Dr. Roland, who had the hardest ado to quiet him, to persuade him that for everything there is a reason. “I know these women ought to be paid at once,” he would say. “I know a man like Vereker ought to have his fee every time he comes. You intend it very kindly, Roland, I know; but you are keeping me back, instead of helping me to recover.” What was poor Dr.Roland to say? He was afraid to tell this proud man that everything was paid. That Vereker had taken but half fees, declaring that from a professional man of such distinction as Mr. Mannering, he ought, had the illness not been so long and troublesome, to have taken nothing at all,—was a possible thing to say; but not that Miss Bethune’s purse had supplied these half fees. Even that they should merely be half was a kind of grievance to the patient. “I hope you told him that as soon as I was well enough I should see to it,” he cried. “I have no claim to be let off so. Distinction! the distinction of a half man who never accomplished anything!”
“Come, Mannering, come, that will not do. You are the first and only man in England in your own way.”
“In my own way? And what a miserable petty way, a way that leads to nothing and nowhere!” he cried.
This mood did not contribute to recovery. After his laborious dressing, which occupied all the morning, he would sit in his chair doing nothing, saying nothing, turning with a sort of sickness of despair from books, not looking even at the paper, without a smile even for Dora. The only thing he would sometimes do was to note down figures with a pencil on a sheet of paper and add them up, and make attempts to balance them with the sum which quarter day brought him. Poor Mr. Mannering was refused all information about the sums he was owing; he put them down conjecturally, now adding something, now subtractingsomething. As a matter of fact his highest estimation was below the truth. And then, by some unhappy chance, the bills that were lying in the sitting-room were brought to him. Alas! the foolishest bills—bills which Dora’s father, knowing that she was unprovided for, should never have incurred—bills for old books, for fine editions, for delicate scientific instruments. A man with only his income from the Museum, and his child to provide for, should never have thought of such things.
“Father,” said Dora, thinking of nothing but to rouse him, “there is a large parcel which has never been opened, which came from Fiddler’s after you were taken ill. I had not any heart to open it to see what was in it; but perhaps it would amuse you to look at what is in it now.”
“Fiddler’s?” he said, with a sick look of dismay. “Another—another! What do I want with books, when I have not a penny to pay my expenses, nor a place to hide my head?”
“Oh, father, don’t talk so: only have patience, and everything will come right,” cried Dora, with the facile philosophy of youth. “They are great big books; I am sure they are something you wanted very much. It will amuse you to look at them, at least.”
He did not consent in words, but a half motion of his head made Dora bring in, after a little delay to undo the large parcel, two great books covered with old-fashioned gilding, in brown leather, frayed at the corners—books to make the heart of a connoisseur dance, books looked out for in catalogues,followed about from one sale to another. Mr. Mannering’s eyes, though they were dim and sunken, gave forth a momentary blaze. He put out his trembling hands for them, as Dora approached, almost tottering under the weight, carrying them in her arms.
“I will put them beside you on the table, father. Now you can look at them without tiring yourself, and I will run and fetch your beef tea. Oh, good news!” cried Dora, flinging into Miss Bethune’s room as she ran downstairs. “He is taking a little interest! I have just given him the books from Fiddler’s, and he is looking a little like his own self.”
She had interrupted what seemed a very serious conversation, perceiving this only now after she had delivered her tidings. She blushed, drew back, and begged Miss Bethune’s pardon, with a curious look at the unknown visitor who was seated on the sofa by that lady’s side. Dora knew all Miss Bethune’s visitors by heart. She knew most of those even who were pensioners, and came for money or help, and had been used to be called in to help to entertain the few callers for years past. But this was some one altogether new, not like anybody she had ever seen before, very much agitated, with a grey and worn face, which got cruelly red by moments, looking ill, tired, miserable. Poor lady! and in deep mourning, which was no doubt the cause of her trouble, and a heavy crape veil hanging over her face. She gave a little cry at the sight of Dora, and clasped her hands. The gesture caused her veilto descend like a cloud, completely concealing her face.
“I beg your pardon, indeed. I did not know there was anybody here.”
Miss Bethune made her a sign to be silent, and laid her hand upon her visitor’s arm, who was tremulously putting up her veil in the same dangerous overhanging position as before.
“This is Dora—as you must have guessed,” she said.
The lady began to cry, feebly sobbing, as if she could not restrain herself. “I saw it was—I saw it was,” she said.
“Dora, come here,” said Miss Bethune. “This lady is—a relation of yours—a relation of—your poor mamma.”
The lady sobbed, and held out her hands. Dora was not altogether pleased with her appearance. She might have cried at home, the girl thought. When you go out to pay a call, or even to make inquiries, you should make them and not cry: and there was something that was ridiculous in the position of the veil, ready to topple over in its heavy folds of crape. She watched it to see when the moment would come.
“Why ‘my poor mamma’?” said Dora. “Is it because mother is dead?”
“There are enough of reasons,” Miss Bethune said hastily.
Dora flung back her head with a sudden resistance and defiance. “I don’t know about mother. She has been dead ever since I remember; but she was my mother, and nobody has anyright to be sorry for her, as though that were a misfortune.”
“She is a little perverse thing,” said Miss Bethune, “but she has a great spirit. Dora, come here. I will go and see about your papa’s beef tea, while you come and speak to this lady.” She stooped over the girl for a moment as she passed her going out. “And be kind,” she whispered; “for she’s very ill, poor thing, and very broken. Be merciful in your strength and in your youth.”
Dora could not tell what this might mean. Merciful? She, who was still only a child, and, to her own consciousness, ordered about by everybody, and made nothing of. The stranger sat on the sofa, trembling and sobbing, her face of a sallow paleness, her eyes half extinguished in tears. The heavy folds of the crape hanging over her made the faded countenance appear as if looking out of a cave.
“I am afraid you are not well,” said Dora, drawing slowly near.
“No, I am not at all well. Come here and sit by me, will you? I am—dying, I think.”
“Oh, no,” said Dora, with a half horror, half pity. “Do not say that.”
The poor lady shook her head. “I should not mind, if perhaps it made people a little forgiving—a little indulgent. Oh, Dora, my child, is it you, really you, at last?”
Dora suffered her hand to be taken, suffered herself to be drawn close, and a tremulous kiss pressed upon her cheek. She did not know howto respond. She felt herself entangled in the great crape veil, and her face wet with the other’s tears. She herself was touched by pity, but by a little contrariety as well, and objection to this sudden and so intimate embrace.
“I am very, very sorry if you are ill,” she said, disengaging herself as gently as possible. “My father has been very ill, so I know about it now; but I don’t know you.”
“My darling,” the poor lady said. “My darling, my little child! my Dora, that I have thought and dreamed of night and day!”
Dora was more than ever confused. “But I don’t know you at all,” she said.
“No, that is what is most dreadful: not at all, not at all!—and I dying for the sight of you, and to hold you in my arms once before I die.”
She held the girl with her trembling arms, and the two faces, all entangled and overshadowed by the great black veil, looked into each other, so profoundly unlike, not a line in either which recalled or seemed to connect with the other. Dora was confounded and abashed by the close contact, and her absolute incapacity to respond to this enthusiasm. She put up her hands, which was the only thing that occurred to her, and threw quite back with a subdued yet energetic movement that confusing veil. She was conscious of performing this act very quietly, but to the stranger the quick soft movement was like energy and strength personified.
“Oh, Dora,” she said, “you are not like me. I never was so lively, so strong as you are. Ithink I must have been a poor creature, always depending upon somebody. You could never be like that.”
“I don’t know,” said Dora. “Ought I to have been like you? Are we such near relations as that?”
“Just as near as—almost as near as—oh, child, how I have longed for you, and thought of you! You have never, never been out of my mind—not a day, Dora, scarcely an hour. Oh, if you only knew!”
“You must then have been very fond of my mother,” Dora said a little stiffly. She might have been less cold had this enthusiasm been less great.
“Your mother!” the stranger said. She broke out into audible weeping again, after comparative composure. “Oh, yes, I suppose I was—oh, yes, I suppose I was,” she said.
“You only suppose you were, and yet you are so fond as this of me?—which can be only,” said Dora, severely logical, “for her sake.”
The poor lady trembled, and was still for a moment; she then said, faltering: “We were so close together, she and I. We were like one. But a child is different—you are her and yourself too. But you are so young, my dearest, my dearest! You will not understand that.”
“I understand it partly,” said Dora; “but it is so strange that I never heard of you. Were my mother’s relations against my father? You must forgive me,” the girl said, withdrawing herself a little, sitting very upright; “but father, youknow, has been everything to me. Father and I are one. I should like very much to hear about mamma, who must have died so long ago: but my first thought must always be for father, who has been everything to me, and I to him.”
A long minute passed, during which the stranger said nothing. Her head was sunk upon her breast; her hand—which was on Dora’s waist—quivered, the nervous fingers beating unconsciously upon Dora’s firm smooth belt.
“I have nothing, nothing to say to you against your father. Oh, nothing!—not a word! I have no complaint—no complaint! He is a good man, your father. And to have you cling to him, stand up for him, is not that enough?—is not that enough,” she cried, with a shrill tone, “whatever failed?”
“Then,” said Dora, pursuing her argument, “mamma’s relations were not friends to him?”
The lady withdrew her arm from Dora’s waist. She clasped her tremulous hands together, as if in supplication. “Nothing was done against him—oh, nothing, nothing!” she cried. “There was no one to blame, everybody said so. It was a dreadful fatality; it was a thing no one could have foreseen or guarded against. Oh, my Dora, couldn’t you give a little love, a little kindness, to a poor woman, even though she was not what you call a friend to your father? She never was his enemy—never, never!—never had an evil thought of him!—never wished to harm him—oh, never, never, never!” she cried.
She swayed against Dora’s breast, rockingherself in uncontrolled distress, and Dora’s heart was touched by that involuntary contact, and by the sight of an anguish which was painfully real, though she did not understand what it meant. With a certain protecting impulse, she put her own arm round the weeping woman to support her. “Don’t cry,” she said, as she might have said to a child.
“I will not cry. I will be very glad, and very happy, if you will only give me a little of your love, Dora,” the lady sobbed in a broken voice. “A little of your love,—not to take it from your father,—a little, just a little! Oh, my child, my child!”
“Are you my mother’s sister?” the girl asked solemnly.
The stranger raised her head again, with a look which Dora did not understand. Her eyes were full of tears, and of a wistful appeal which said nothing to the creature to whom it was addressed. After a moment, with a pathetic cry of pain and self-abandonment, she breathed forth a scarcely intelligible “Yes".
“Then now I know,” said Dora, in a more satisfied tone. She was not without emotion herself. It was impossible to see so much feeling and not to be more or less affected by it, even when one did not understand, or even felt it to be extreme. “Then I will call you aunt, and we shall know where we are,” she added. “I am very glad to have relations, as everybody has them. May I mention you to father? It must be long since you quarrelled, whatever it wasabout. I shall say to him: ‘You need not take any notice, but I am glad, very glad, to have an aunt like other girls’.”
“No, no, no, no—not to him! You must not say a word.”
“I don’t know how I can keep a secret from father,” Dora said.
“Oh, child,” cried the lady, “do not be too hard on us! It would be hard for him, too, and he has been ill. Don’t say a word to him—for his own sake!”
“It will be very strange to keep a secret from father,” Dora said reflectively. Then she added: “To be sure, there have been other things—about the nurses, and all that. And he is still very weak. I will not mention it, since you say it is for his own sake.”
“For we could never meet—never, never!” cried the lady, with her head on Dora’s breast—“never, unless perhaps one of us were dying. I could never look him in the face, though perhaps if I were dying—— Dora, kiss your poor—your poor, poor—relation. Oh, my child! oh, my darling! kiss me as that!”
“Dear aunt,” said Dora quietly. She spoke in a very subdued tone, in order to keep down the quite uncalled-for excitement and almost passion in the other’s voice. She could not but feel that her new relation was a person with very little self-control, expressing herself far too strongly, with repetitions and outcries quite uncalled for in ordinary conversation, and that it was her, Dora’s, business to exercise a mollifyinginfluence. “This is for you,” she said, touching the sallow, thin cheek with her young rosy lips. “And this is for poor mamma—poor young mamma, whom I never saw.”
The lady gave a quick cry, and clutched the girl in her trembling arms.
Themeeting with her new relation had a great effect upon Dora’s mind. It troubled her, though there was no reason in the world why the discovery that her mother had a sister, and she herself an aunt, should be painful. An aunt is not a very interesting relation generally, not enough to make a girl’s heart beat; but it added a complication to the web of altogether new difficulties in which Dora found herself entangled. Everything had been so simple in the old days—those dear old days now nearly three months off, before Mr. Mannering fell ill, to which now Dora felt herself go back with such a sense of happiness and ease, perhaps never to be known again. Then everything had been above board: there had been no payments to make that were not made naturally by her father, the fountainhead of everything, who gave his simple orders, and had them fulfilled, and provided for every necessity. Now Dora feared a knock at the door of his room lest it should be some indiscreet messenger bringing direct a luxury or novelty which it had been intended to smuggle in so that he might not observe it, or introduce with some one’s compliments as an accidental offering to the sick man. To hurry off Janie or Molly downstairs with these good things intended to temptthe invalid’s appetite, to stamp a secret foot at the indiscretions of Jane, who would bring in the bill for these dainties, or announce their arrival loud out, rousing Mr. Mannering to inquiries, and give a stern order that such extravagances should be no more, were now common experiences to Dora. She had to deceive him, which was, Miss Bethune assured her, for his good, but which Dora felt with a sinking heart was not at all for her own good, and made her shrink from her father’s eye. To account for the presence of some rare wine which was good for him by a little story which, though it had been carefully taught her by Dr. Roland or Miss Bethune, was not true—to make out that it was the most natural thing in the world thatpatés de fois gras, and the strongest soups and essence should be no more expensive than common beef tea, the manufacture of Bloomsbury, because the doctor knew some place where they were to be had at wholesale rates for almost nothing—these were devices now quite familiar to her.
It was no worse to conceal the appearance of this new and strange personage on the scene, the relation of whom she had never heard, and whose existence was to remain a secret; but still it was a bigger secret than any that concerned the things that were to eat or drink, or even Mrs. Simcox’s bills. Concealment is an art that has to be carefully learnt, like other arts, and it is extremely difficult to some minds, who will more easily acquire the most elaborate handicraft than the trick of selecting what is to be told and what isnot to be told. It was beyond all description difficult to Dora. She was ready to betray herself at almost every moment, and had it not been that her own mind was much perturbed and troubled by her strange visitor, and by attempts to account for her to herself, she never could have succeeded in it. What could the offence be that made it impossible for her father ever to meet the sister of his wife again? Dora had learned from novels a great deal about the mysteries of life, some which her natural mind rejected as absurd, some which she contemplated with awe as tragic possibilities entirely out of the range of common life. She had read about implacable persons who once offended could never forgive, and of those who revenged themselves and pursued a feud to the death. But the idea of her father in either of these characters was too ridiculous to be dwelt upon for a moment. And there had been no evil intended, no harm,—only a fatality. What is a fatality? To have such dreadful issues, a thing must be serious, very terrible. Dora was bewildered and overawed. She put this question to Miss Bethune, but received no light on the subject. “A fatality is a thing that is not intentional—that happens by accident—that brings harm when you mean nothing but good,” that authority said.
“But how should that be? It says in the Bible that people must not do evil that good may come. But to do good that evil may come, I never heard of that.”
“There are many things in the world that you never heard of, Dora, my dear.”
“Oh yes, yes, I know,” cried the girl impatiently. “You are always saying that, because I am young—as if it were my fault that I am young; but that does not change anything. It is no matter, then, whether you have any meaning in what you do or not?”
“Sometimes it appears as if it was no matter. We walk blindly in this world, and often do things unawares that we would put our hands in the fire rather than do. You say an unguarded word, meaning nothing, and it falls to the ground, as you think, but afterwards springs up into a poisonous tree and blights your life; or you take a turn to the right hand instead of the left when you go out from your own door, and it means ruin and death—that’s fatality, and it’s everywhere,” said Miss Bethune, with a deep sigh.
“I do not believe in it,” said Dora, standing straight and strong, like a young tree, and holding her head high.
“Nor did I, my dear, when I was your age,” Miss Bethune said.
At this moment there was a light knock at the door, and there appeared suddenly the young man whom Miss Bethune had met in the Square, and who had come as the messenger of the lady who was Dora’s aunt.
“She is asking me what fatality is,” said Miss Bethune. “I wonder if you have any light to throw on the subject? You are nearer her age than I.”
The two young people looked at each other. Dora, though she was only sixteen, was more of apersonage than the young Gordon whom she had not seen before. She looked at him with the condescension of a very young girl brought up among elder people, and apt to feel a boundless imaginative superiority over those of her own age. A young man was a slight person to Dora. She was scarcely old enough to feel any of the interest in him which exists naturally between the youth and the maiden. She looked at him from her pedestal, half scornful beforehand of anything he might say.
“Fatality?” he said. “I think it’s a name people invent for anything particularly foolish which they do, when it turns out badly: though they might have known it would turn out badly all the time.”
“That is exactly what I think,” cried Dora, clapping her hands.
“This is the young lady,” said young Gordon, “whom I used to help to pack the toys for. I hope she will let me call her Miss Dora, for I don’t know her by any other name.”
“To pack the toys?” said Dora. Her face grew blank, then flashed with a sudden light, then grew quite white and still again, with a gasp of astonishment and recognition. “Oh!” she cried, and something of disappointment was in her tone, “was it—was itshethat sent them?” In the commotion of her feelings a sudden deep red followed the paleness. Dora was all fancy, changeableness, fastidiousness, imagination, as was natural to her age. Why was she disappointed to know that her yearly presents coming out ofthe unseen, the fairy gifts that testified to some love unknown, came from so legitimate a source, from her mother’s sister, her own nearest relation—the lady of the other day? I cannot tell how it was, nor could she, nor any one, but it was so; and she felt this visionary, absurd disappointment go to the bottom of her heart. “Oh,” she repeated, growing blank again, with a sort of opaque shadow closing over the brightness of her eyes and clouding her face, “so that was where my boxes came from? And you helped to pack the toys? I ought to have known,” said Dora, very sedately, feeling as if she had suddenly fallen from a great height.
“Yes,” said Miss Bethune, “we ought to have thought of that at once. Who else could have followed with such a faithful imagination, Dora? Who could have remembered your age, and the kind of things you want, and how you would grow, but a kind woman like that, with all the feelings of a mother? Oh, we should have thought of it before.”
Dora at first made no reply. Her face, generally so changeable and full of expression, settled down more and more into opaqueness and a blank rigidity. She was deeply disappointed, though why she could not have told—nor what dream of a fairy patroness, an exalted friend, entirely belonging to the realms of fancy, she had conceived in her childish imagination as the giver of these gifts. At all events, the fact was so. Mrs. Bristow, with her heavy crape veil, ready to fall at any moment over her face, with the worn lines of hercountenance, the flush and heat of emotion, her tears and repetitions, was a disappointing image to come between her and the vision of a tender friend, too delicate, too ethereal a figure for any commonplace embodiment which had been a kind of tutelary genius in Dora’s dreams all her life. Any one in actual flesh and blood would have been a shock after that long-cherished, visionary dream. And young Gordon’s laughing talk of the preparation of the box, and of his own suggestions as to its contents, and the picture he conjured up of a mystery which was half mischievous, and in which there was not only a desire to please but to puzzle the distant recipient of all these treasures, both offended and shocked the girl in the fantastic delicacy of her thoughts.
Without being himself aware of it, the young man gave a glimpse into the distant Southern home, in which it would appear he had been brought up, which was in reality very touching and attractive, though it reduced Dora to a more and more strong state of revolt. On the other hand, Miss Bethune listened to him with a rapt air of happiness, which was more wonderful still—asking a hundred questions, never tiring of any detail. Dora bore it all as long as she could, feeling herself sink more and more from the position of a young princess, mysteriously loved and cherished by a distant friend, half angelic, half queenly, into that of a little girl, whom a fantastic kind relation wished to pet and to bewilder, half in love and half in fun, taking the boy into her confidence, who was still more to her and nearerto her than Dora. She could not understand how Miss Bethune could sit and listen with that rapt countenance; and she finally broke in, in the very midst of the narrative to which she had listened (had any one taken any notice) with growing impatience, to say suddenly, “In the meantime father is by himself, and I shall have to go to him,” with a tone of something like injury in her voice.
“But Gilchrist is there if he wants anything, Dora.”
“Gilchrist is very kind, but she is not quite the same as me,” said Dora, holding her head high.
She made Mr. Gordon a little gesture, something between farewell and dismissal, in a very lofty way, impressing upon the young man a sense of having somehow offended, which he could not understand. He himself was very much interested in Dora. He had known of her existence for years. She had been a sort of secret between him and the wife of his guardian, who, he was well aware, never discussed with her husband or mentioned in his presence the child who was so mysteriously dear to her; but bestowed all her confidence on this subject on the boy who had grown up in her house and filled to her the place of a son. He had liked the confidence and the secret and the mystery, without much inquiring what they meant. They meant, he supposed, a family quarrel, such as that which had affected all his own life. Such things are a bore and a nuisance; but, after all, don’t matter very much to any but those with whom they originate. Andyoung Gordon was not disposed to trouble his mind with any sort of mystery now.
“Have I said anything I should not have said? Is she displeased?” he said.
“It matters very little if she is displeased or not, a fantastic little girl!” cried Miss Bethune. “Go on, go on with what you are saying. I take more interest in it than words can say.”
But it was not perhaps exactly the same thing to continue that story in the absence of the heroine whose name was its centre all through. She was too young to count with serious effect in the life of a man; and yet it would be difficult to draw any arbitrary line in respect to age with a tall girl full of that high flush of youth which adopts every semblance in turn, and can put all the dignity of womanhood in the eyes of a child. Young Gordon’s impulse slackened in spite of himself; he was pleased, and still more amused, by the interest he excited in this lady, who had suddenly taken him into her intimacy with no reason that he knew of, and was so anxious to know all his story. It was droll to see her listening in that rapt way,—droll, yet touching too. She had said that he reminded her of somebody she knew—perhaps it was some one who was dead, a young brother, a friend of earlier years. He laughed a little to himself, though he was also affected by this curious unexpected interest in him. But he certainly had not the same freedom and eloquence in talking of the old South American home, now broken up, and the visionary little maiden, who, all unknown herself, had lent it a charm, whenDora was gone. Neither, perhaps, did Miss Bethune concentrate her interest on that part that related to Dora. When he began to flag she asked him questions of a different kind.
“Those guardians of yours must have been very good to you—as good as parents?” she said.
“Very good, but not perhaps like parents; for I remember my father very well, and I still have a mother, you know.”
“Your father,” she said, turning away her head a little, “was devoted to you, I suppose?”
“Devoted to me?” he said, with a little surprise, and then laughed. “He was kind enough. We got on very well together. Do men and their sons do more than that?”
“I know very little about men and their sons,” she said hastily; “about men and women I maybe know a little, and not much to their advantage. Oh, you are there, Gilchrist! This is the gentleman I was speaking to you about. Do you see the likeness?”
Gilchrist advanced a step into the room, with much embarrassment in her honest face. She uttered a broken laugh, which was like a giggle, and began as usual to fold hems in her apron.
“I cannot say, mem, that I see a resemblance to any person,” she said.
“You are just a stupid creature!” said her mistress,—“good for nothing but to make an invalid’s beef tea. Just go away, go away and do that.” She turned suddenly to young Gordon, as Gilchrist went out of the room. “That stupidwoman’s face doesn’t bring anything to your mind?” she said hastily.
“Bring anything to my mind?” he cried, with great surprise. “What should she bring to my mind?”
“It was just a fancy that came into mine. Do you remember the scene inGuy Mannering, where Bertram first sees Dominie Sampson? Eh, I hope your education has not been neglected in that great particular?”
“I remember the scene,” he said, with a smile.
“It was perhaps a little of what you young folk call melodramatic: but Harry Bertram’s imagination gets a kind of shock, and he remembers. And so you are a reader of Sir Walter, and mind that scene?”
“I remember it very well,” said the young man, bewildered. “But about the maid? You said——”
“Oh, nothing about the maid; she’s my faithful maid, but a stupid woman as ever existed. Never you mind what I said. I say things that are very silly from time to time. But I would like to know how you ever heard your mother was living, when you have never seen her, nor know anything about her? I suppose not even her name?”
“My father told me so when he was dying: he told Mr. Bristow so, but he gave us no further information. I gathered that my mother—— It is painful to betray such an impression.”
She looked at him with a deep red rising overher cheeks, and a half-defiant look. “I am old enough to be your mother, you need not hesitate to speak before me,” she said.
“It is not that; it is that I can’t associate that name with anything—anything—to be ashamed of.”
“I would hope not, indeed!” she cried, standing up, towering over him as if she had added a foot to her height. She gave forth a long fiery breath, and then asked, “Did he dare to say that?” with a heaving breast.
“He did not say it: but my guardian thought——”
“Oh, your guardian thought! That was what your guardian would naturally think. A man—that is always of an evil mind where women are concerned! And what did she think?—her, his wife, the other guardian, the woman I have seen?”
“She is not like any one else,” said young Gordon; “she will never believe in any harm. You have given me one scene, I will give you another. She said what Desdemona said, ‘I do not believe there was ever any such woman’.”
“Bless her! But oh, there are—there are!” cried Miss Bethune, tears filling her eyes, “in life as well as in men’s ill imaginations. But not possible to her or to me!”
YoungGordon had gone, and silence had fallen over Miss Bethune’s room. It was a commonplace room enough, well-sized, for the house was old and solid, with three tall windows swathed in red rep curtains, partially softened but not extinguished by the white muslin ones which had been put up over them. Neither Miss Bethune nor her maid belonged to the decorative age. They had no principles as to furniture, but accepted what they had, with rather a preference than otherwise for heavy articles in mahogany, and things that were likely to last. They thought Mr. Mannering’s dainty furniture and his faded silken curtains were rather of the nature of trumpery. People could think so in these days, and in the locality of Bloomsbury, without being entirely abandoned in character, or given up to every vicious sentiment. Therefore, I cannot say, as I should be obliged to say now-a-days, in order to preserve any sympathy for Miss Bethune in the reader’s mind, that the room was pretty, and contained an indication of its mistress’s character in every carefully arranged corner. It was a room furnished by Mrs. Simcox, the landlady. It had been embellished, perhaps, by a warm hearthrug—not Persian, however, by any means—and made comfortable by a few easychairs. There were a number of books about, and there was one glass full of wallflowers on the table, very sweet in sober colours—a flower that rather corresponds with the mahogany, and the old-fashioned indifference to ornament and love of use. You would have thought, had you looked into this room, which was full of spring sunshine, bringing out the golden tints in the wallflower, and reflected in the big mirror above the fireplace, that it was empty after young Gordon had gone. But it was not empty. It was occupied instead by a human heart, so overbursting with passionate hope, love, suspense, and anxiety, that it was a wonder the silence did not tinge, and the quiet atmosphere betray that strain and stress of feeling. Miss Bethune sat in the shadowed corner between the fireplace and the farther window, with the whiteness of the curtains blowing softly in her face as the air came in. That flutter dazzled the beholder, and made Gilchrist think when she entered that there was nobody there. The maid looked round, and then clasped her hands and said to herself softly: “She’ll be gane into her bedroom to greet there".
“And why should I greet, you foolish woman?” cried Miss Bethune from her corner, with a thrill in her voice which betrayed the commotion in her mind.
Gilchrist started so violently that the bundle of clean “things,” fresh and fragrant from the country cart which had brought home the washing, fell from her arms. “Oh, mem, if I had kent you were there.”
“My bonnie clean things!” cried Miss Bethune, “with the scent of the grass upon them—and now they’re all spoiled with the dust of Bloomsbury! Gather them up and carry them away, and then you can come back here.” She remained for a moment as quiet as before, after Gilchrist had hurried away; but any touch would have been sufficient to move her in her agitation, and presently she rose and began to pace about the room. “Gone to my room to greet there, is that what she thinks? Like Mary going to the grave to weep there. No, no, that’s not the truth. It’s the other way. I might be going to laugh, and to clap my hands, as they say in the Psalms. But laughing is not the first expression of joy. I would maybe be more like greeting, as she says. A person laughs in idleness, for fun, not for joy. Joy has nothing, nothing but the old way of tears, which is just a contradiction. And maybe, after all, she was right. I’ll go to my room and weep for thankfulness, and lightheartedness, and joy.”
“Oh, mem,” cried Gilchrist, coming in, “gang softly, gang softly! You’re more sure than any mortal person has a right to be.”
“Ye old unbeliever,” cried Miss Bethune, pausing in the midst of her sob. “What has mortality to do with evidence? It would be just as true if I were to die to-morrow, for that matter.”
“Eh, mem,” cried Gilchrist again, “ye’re awfu’ easy to please in the way of evidence. What do you call evidence? A likeness ye think ye see, but I canna; and there’s naething in alikeness. Miss Dora is no more like her papaw than me, there is nothing to be lippened to in the like of that. And then the age—that would maybe be about the same, I grant ye that, so much as it comes to; and a name that is no’ the right name, but a kind of an approach to it.”
“You are a bonnie person,” cried Miss Bethune, “to take authority upon you about names, and never to think of the commonest old Scotch custom, that the son drops or turns the other way the name the father has taken to his own. I hope I know better! If nothing had ever happened, if the lad had been bred and trained at home, he would be Gordon, just as sure as he is Gordon now.”
“I’m no’ a person of quality, mem,” said Gilchrist, holding her ground. “I have never set up for being wan of the gentry: it would ill become me, being just John Gilchrist the smith’s daughter, and your servant-woman, that has served you this five and twenty years. But there are as many Gordons in Aberdeen as there are kirk steeples in this weary London town.”
Miss Bethune made an impatient gesture. “You’re a sagacious person, Gilchrist, altogether, and might be a ruling elder if you were but a man: but I think perhaps I know what’s in it as well as you do, and if I’m satisfied that a thing is, I will not yield my faith, as you might know by this time, neither to the Lord President himself, nor even to you.”
“Eh, bless me, mem, but I ken that weel!” cried Gilchrist; “and if I had thought you weretaking it on that high line, never word would have come out of my mouth.”
“I am taking it on no high line—but I see what is for it as well as what is against it. I have kept my head clear,” said Miss Bethune. “On other occasions, I grant you, I may have let myself go: but in all this I have been like a judge, and refused to listen to the voice in my own heart. But it was there all the time, though I crushed it down. How can the like of you understand? You’ve never felt a baby’s cry go into the very marrow of your bones. I’ve set the evidence all out, and pled the cause before my own judgment, never listening one word to the voice in my heart.” Miss Bethune spoke with greater and greater vehemence, but here paused to calm herself. “The boy that was carried off would have been twenty-five on the eighteenth of next month (as well you know), and this boy is just on five and twenty, he told me with his own lips; and his father told him with his dying breath that he had a mother living. He had the grace to do that! Maybe,” said Miss Bethune, dropping her voice, which had again risen in excitement, “he was a true penitent when it came to that. I wish no other thing. Much harm and misery, God forgive him, has he wrought; but I wish no other thing. It would have done my heart good to think that his was touched and softened at the last, to his Maker at least, if no more.”
“Oh, mem, the one would go with the other, if what you think is true.”
“No,” said Miss Bethune, shutting her lips tight, “no, there’s no necessity. If it had been so what would have hindered him to give the boy chapter and verse? Her name is So-and-so, you will hear of her at such a place. But never that—never that, though it would have been so easy! Only that he had a mother living, a mother that the guardian man and the lad himself divined must have been a —— Do you not call that evidence?” cried Miss Bethune, with a harsh triumph. “Do you not divine our man in that? Oh, but I see him as clear as if he had signed his name.”
“Dear mem,” cried Gilchrist, with a “tchick, tchick,” of troubled sympathy and spectatorship, “you canna wish he had been a true penitent and yet think of him like that.”
“And who are you to lay down the law and say what I can do?” cried the lady. She added, with a wave of her hand and her head: “We’ll not argue that question: but if there ever was an action more like the man!—just to give the hint and clear his conscience, but leave the woman’s name to be torn to pieces by any dozen in the place! If that is not evidence, I don’t know what evidence is.”
Gilchrist could say nothing in reply. She shook her head, though whether in agreement or in dissidence it would have been difficult to tell, and folded hem upon hem on her apron, with her eyes fixed upon that, as if it had been the most important of work. “I was wanting to speak,” she said, “when you had a moment to listen to me, about two young folk.”
“What two young folk?” Miss Bethune’s eyes lighted up with a gleam of soft light, her face grew tender in every line. “But Dora is too young, she is far too young for anything of the kind,” she said.
“Eh, mem,” cried Gilchrist, with a mingling of astonishment, admiration, and pity, “can ye think of nothing but yon strange young man?”
“I am thinking of nothing but the bairn, the boy that was stolen away before he knew his right hand from his left, and now is come home.”
“Aweel, aweel,” said Gilchrist, “we will just have to put up with it, as we have put up with it before. And sooner or later her mind will come back to what’s reasonable and true. I was speaking not of the young gentleman, or of any like him, but of the two who were up in the attics that you were wanting to save, if save them ye can. They are just handless creatures, the one and the other; but the woman’s no’ an ill person, poor thing, and would do well if she knew the way. And a baby coming, and the man just a weirdless, feckless, ill man.”
“He cannot help it if he is ill, Gilchrist.”
“Maybe no’,” said Gilchrist cautiously. “I’m never just so sure of that; but, anyway, he’s a delicate creature, feared for everything, and for a Christian eye upon him, which is the worst of all; and wherefore we should take them upon our shoulders, folk that we have nothing to do with, a husband and wife, and the family that’s coming——”
“Oh, woman,” said her mistress, “if theyhave got just a step out of the safe way in the beginning, is that not reason the more for helping them back? And how can I ever know what straitshemight have been put to, and his mother ignorant, and not able to help him?”
“Eh, but I’m thankful to hear you say that again!” Gilchrist cried.
“Not that I can ever have that fear now, for a finer young man, or a more sweet ingenuous look! But no credit to any of us, Gilchrist. I’m thankful to those kind people that have brought him up; but it will always be a pain in my heart that I have had nothing to do with the training of him, and will never be half so much to him as that—that lady, who is in herself a poor, weakly woman, if I may say such a word.”
“It is just a very strange thing,” said Gilchrist, “that yon lady is as much taken up about our Miss Dora as you are, mem, about the young lad.”
“Ah!” said Miss Bethune, with a nod of her head, “but in a different way. Her mother’s sister—very kind and very natural, but oh, how different! I am to contrive to take Dora to see her, for I fear she is not long for this world, Gilchrist. The young lad, as you call him, will soon have nobody to look to but——”
“Mem!” cried Gilchrist, drawing herself up, and looking her mistress sternly in the face.
Miss Bethune confronted her angrily for a moment, then coloured high, and flung down, as it were, her arms. “No, no!” she cried—“no, you are unjust to me, as you have been many times before. I am not glad of her illness, poorthing. God forbid it! I am not exulting, as you think, that she will be out of my way. Oh, Gilchrist, do you think so little of me—a woman you have known this long, long lifetime—as to believe that?”
“Eh, mem,” said Gilchrist, “when you and me begin to think ill of each other, the world will come to an end. We ken each ither far too well for that. Ye may scold me whiles when I little deserve it, and I put a thing upon you for a minnit that is nae blame of yours; but na, na, there is nae misjudging possible between you and me.”
It will be seen that Gilchrist was very cautious in the confession of faith just extorted. She was no flatterer. She knew of what her mistress was capable better than that mistress herself did, and had all her weaknesses on the tips of her fingers. But she had no intention of discouraging that faulty but well-beloved woman. She went on in indulgent, semi-maternal tones: “You’ve had a great deal to excite you and trouble you, and in my opinion it would do ye a great deal of good, and help ye to get back to your ordinary, if you would just put everything else away, and consider with me what was to be done for thae two feckless young folk. If the man is not put to do anything, he will be in more trouble than ever, or I’m no judge.”
“And it might have been him!” said Miss Bethune to herself—the habitual utterance which had inspired so many acts of charity. “I think you are maybe right, Gilchrist,” she added; “itwill steady me, and do me good. Run downstairs and see if the doctor is in. He knows more about him than we do, and we’ll just have a good consultation and see what is the best to be done.”
The doctor was in, and came directly, and there was a very anxious consultation about the two young people, to whose apparently simple, commonplace mode of life there had come so sudden an interruption. Dr. Roland had done more harm than good by his action in the matter. He confessed that had he left things alone, and not terrified the young coward on the verge of crime, the catastrophe might perhaps, by more judicious ministrations, have been staved off. Terror of being found out is not always a preservative, it sometimes hurries on the act which it ought to prevent; and the young man who had been risking his soul in petty peculations which he might have made up for, fell over the precipice into a great one in sheer cowardice, when the doctor’s keen eye read him, and made him tremble. Dr. Roland took blame to himself. He argued that it was of no use trying to find Hesketh another situation. “He has no character, and no one will take him without a character: or if some Quixote did, on your word, Miss Bethune, or mine, who are very little to be trusted in such a case, the unfortunate wretch would do the same again. It’s not his fault, he cannot help himself. His grandfather, or perhaps a more distant relation——”
“Do not speak nonsense to me, doctor, for I will not listen to it,” said Miss Bethune. “Whenthere’s a poor young wife in the case, and a baby coming, how dare you talk about the fool’s grandfather?”
“Mem and sir,” said Gilchrist, “if you would maybe listen for a moment to me. My mistress, she has little confidence in my sense, but I have seen mony a thing happen in my day, and twenty years’ meddlin’ and mellin’ with poor folk under her, that is always too ready with her siller, makes ye learn if ye were ever sae silly. Now, here is what I would propose. He’s maybe more feckless than anything worse. He will get no situation without a character, and it will not do for you—neither her nor you, sir, asking your pardon—to make yourselves caution for a silly gowk like yon. But set him up some place in a little shop of his ain. He’ll no cheat himsel’, and the wife she can keep an eye on him. If it’s in him to do weel, he’ll do weel, or at least we’ll see if he tries; and if no’, in that case ye’ll ken just what you will lose. That is what I would advise, if you would lippen to me, though I am not saying I am anything but a stupid person, and often told so,” Gilchrist said.
“It is not a bad idea, however,” said Dr. Roland.
“Neither it is. But the hussy, to revenge herself on me like that!” her mistress cried.