But the door opened suddenly, and, like a magic-lantern figure, presented with a snap, appeared close before my eyes the great muffled face, with the forbidding smirk, of Madame de la Rougierre.
“Wat you mean, my dear cheaile?” she inquired with a malevolent shrewdness in her eyes, and her hollow smile all the time disconcerting me more even than the suddenness of her appearance; “wat for you approach so softly? I do not sleep, you see, but you feared, perhaps, to have the misfortune of wakening me, and so you came — is it not so? — to leesten, and look in very gently; you want to know how I was. Vous êtes bien aimable d’avoir pensé à moi. Bah!” she cried, suddenly bursting through her irony. “Wy could not Lady Knollys come herself and leesten to the keyhole to make her report? Fi donc! wat is there to conceal? Nothing. Enter, if you please. Every one they are welcome!” and she flung the door wide, turned her back upon me, and, with an ejaculation which I did not understand, strode into the room.
“I did not come with any intention, Madame, to pry or to intrude — you don’t think so — you can’t think so — you can’t possibly mean to insinuate anything so insulting!”
I was very angry, and my tremors had all vanished now.
“No, not for you, dear cheaile; I was thinking to milady Knollys, who, without cause, is my enemy. Every one has enemy; you will learn all that so soon as you are little older, and without cause she is mine. Come, Maud, speak a the truth — was it not miladi Knollys who sent you here doucement, doucement, so quaite to my door — is it not so, little rogue?”
Madame had confronted me again, and we were now standing in the middle of her floor.
I indignantly repelled the charge, and searching me for a moment with her oddly-shaped, cunning eyes, she said —
“That is good cheaile, you speak a so direct — I like that, and am glad to hear; but, my dear Maud, that woman ——”
“Lady Knollys is papa’s cousin,” I interposed a little gravely.
“She does hate a me so, you av no idea. She as tried to injure me several times, and would employ the most innocent person, unconsciously you know, my dear, to assist her malice.”
Here Madame wept a little. I had already discovered that she could shed tears whenever she pleased. Ii have heard of such persons, but I never met another before or since.
Madame was unusually frank — no one ever knew better when to be candid. At present I suppose she concluded that Lady Knollys would certainly relate whatever she knew concerning her before she left Knowl; and so Madame’s reserves whatever they might be, were dissolving, and she growing childlike and confiding.
“Et comment va monsieur votre père aujourd’hui?”
“Very well,” I thanked her.
“And how long milady Knollys her visit is likely to be?”
“I could not say exactly, but for some days.”
“Eh bien, my dear cheaile, I find myself better this morning, and we must return to our lessons. Je veux m’habiller, ma chère Maud; you will wait me in the school-room.”
By this time Madame, who, though lazy, could make an effort, and was capable of getting into a sudden hurry, had placed herself before her dressing-table, and was ogling her discoloured and bony countenance in the glass.
“Wat horror! I am so pale. Quel ennui! wat bore! Ow weak av I grow in two three days!”
And she practised some plaintive, invalid glances into the mirror. But on a sudden there came a little sharp inquisitive frown as she looked over the frame of the glass, upon the terrace beneath. It was only a glance, and she sat down languidly in her arm-chair to prepare, I suppose, for the fatigues of the toilet.
My curiosity was sufficiently aroused to induce me to ask —
“But why, Madame, do you fancy that Lady Knollys dislikes you?”
“’Tis not fancy, my dear Maud. Ah ha, no! Mais c’est boute une histoire — too tedious to tell now — some time maybe — and you will learn when you are little older, the most violent hatreds often they are the most without cause. But, my dear cheaile, the hours they are running from us, and I must dress. Vite, vite! so you run away to the school-room, and I will come after.”
Madame had her dressing-case and her mysteries, and palpably stood in need of repairs; so away I went to my studies. The room which we called the school-room was partly beneath the floor of Madame’s bed-chamber, and commanded the same view; so, remembering my governess’s peering glance from her windows, I looked out, and saw Cousin Monica making a brisk promenade up and down the terrace-walk. Well, that was quite enough to account for it. I had grown very curious, and I resolved when our lessons were over to join her and make another attempt to discover the mystery.
As I sat over my books, I fancied I heard a movement outside the door. I waited for a time, expecting to see the door open, but she did not come; so I opened it suddenly myself, but Madame was not on the threshold nor on the lobby. I heard a rustling, however, and on the staircase over the banister I saw the folds of her silk dress as she descended.
She is going, I thought, to seek an interview with Lady Knollys. She intends to propitiate that dangerous lady; so I amused some eight or ten minutes in watching Cousin Monica’s quick march and right-about face upon the parade-ground of the terrace. But no one joined her.
“She is certainly talking to papa,” was my next and more probable conjecture. Having he profoundest distrust of Madame, I was naturally extremely jealous of the confidential interviews in which deceit and malice might make their representations plausibly and without answer.
“Yes, I’ll run down and see — see papa; she shan’t tell lies behind my back, horrid woman!”
At the study-door I knocked, and forthwith entered. My father was sitting near the window, his open book before him, Madame standing at the other side of the table, her cunning eyes bathed in tears, and her pocket-handkerchief pressed to her mouth. Her eyes glittered stealthily on me for an instant; she was sobbing — désolée, in fact — that grim grenadier lady, and her attitude was exquisitely dejected and timid. But she was, notwithstanding, reading closely and craftily my father’s face. He was not looking at her, but rather upward toward the ceiling, reflectively leaning on his hand, with an expression, not angry, but rather surly and annoyed.
“I ought to have heard of this before, Madame,” my father was saying as I came in; “not that it would have made any difference — not the least; mind that. But it was the kind of thing that I ought to have heard, and the omission was not strictly right.”
Madame, in a shrill and lamentable key, opened her voluble reply, but was arrested by a nod from my father, who asked me if I wanted anything.
“Only — only that I was waiting in the school-room for Madame, and did not know where she was.”
“Well, she is here, you see, and will join you up-stairs in a few minutes.”
So back I went again, huffed, angry, and curious, and sat back in my chair with a clouded countenance, thinking very little about lessons.
When Madame entered, I did not lift my head or eyes.
“Good cheaile!
