"Take your book," said Mrs. Vane at last, "and be careful. No, you need, not go into ecstasies"—seeing from Parker's clasped hands that she was about to utter a word of gratitude. "I shall keep you no longer than you are useful to me—do you understand? Go on following Miss Vane; I want to know whom she sees, where she goes, what she does—if possible, what she talks about. Does she get letters—letters, I mean beside those that come in the post-bag?"
"I don't know, ma'am."
"Make it your business to know, then. You can go;" and Flossy turned away her face, so as not to see Parker's rather blundering exit.
"The woman is a fool," she said to herself contemptuously, when Parker had gone; "but I think she is—so far—a faithful fool. These women who have made a muddle of their lives are admirable tools; they are always so afraid of being found out;" and Flossy smiled cynically, although at the same moment she was conscious that she shared the peculiarity of the woman of whom she spoke—she also was afraid of being found out.
She had come across Parker before her marriage, when she was in Scotland. The woman had then been detected in theft and in an intrigue with one of the grooms, and had been ignominiously dismissed from service; but Flossy had chosen to seek her out and befriend her—not from any charitable motive, but because she saw in the discarded maid a person whom it might be useful to have at beck and call. Parker's bedridden mother was dependent upon her; and her one fear in life was that this mother should get to know her true story and be deprived of support. Upon this fear Mrs. Vane traded very skilfully; and, having installed Parker in the place of lady's-maid to herself and her husband's niece, she obtained accurate information concerning Enid's movements and actions, supplied from a source which Enid never even suspected.
Such knowledge was generally very useful to Flossy, but at present she was puzzled by certain items of news brought to her by Parker. "What does this constant meeting with Mr. Evandale mean?" she asked herself. Then her thoughts went back to the day of Mrs. Meldreth's death—a day which she never remembered without a shudder. She knew very well that the poor old woman had bitterly repented of her share in a deed to which her daughter Sabina and Mrs. Vane had urged her; it had been as much as Mrs. Vane and Sabina, by their united efforts, could do to make her hold her tongue. No fear of the General's vengeance, of Sabina's disgrace, of punishment of any kind, would have ensured her silence very much longer. The old woman had said again and again that she could not bear—in her own words—"to see Miss Enid kep' out of her own." She used to come to Flossy's boudoir and sit there, crying and entreating that she might be allowed to tell the General the truth. She did not seem to care when she was reminded that she herself would probably be punished, and that Sabina and Mrs. Vane had nothing but ruin before them if the truth were known. She had the fear of death on her soul—the fear that her sin would bring her eternal misery.
"You are a wickedly selfish woman!" Flossy once said to her, with as near an approach to passion as her temperament would allow. "You think of nothing but your own salvation. Our ruin, body and soul, does not matter to you."
And indeed this was true. The terrors of the law had gotten hold of Mrs. Meldreth's conscience. The avenging sword, carried by a religion in which she believed, had pierced her heart. She would have given everything she had in the world to be able to follow the advice given in her Prayer-book, to go to a "discreet and learned minister of God's Word"—Mr. Evandale, for instance—and quiet her conscience by opening her grief to him. But both Sabina and Mrs. Vane were prepared to go to almost any length before they would give her the chance of doing this.
Mrs. Vane was of course the leading spirit of the three. Where Sabina only raved and stormed, Mrs. Vane mocked and persuaded. She argued, threatened, coaxed, bribed, in turns; she gave Mrs. Meldreth as much money as she could spare, and promised more for the future; but the poor woman—at first open to persuasion—grew more and more difficult to restrain, and became at last almost imbecile from the pressure of her secret upon her mind. Flossy had begun seriously to consider the expediency of inducing Sabina to consign her mother to a lunatic asylum, or even to employ violent means for the shortening of her days on earth—there was nothing at which her soul would have revolted if her own prosperity could have been secured by it; but Mrs. Meldreth's natural illness and death removed all necessity for extreme measures.
Nothing indeed would have been more fortunate for Flossy and her accomplice than Mrs. Meldreth's death, had it not been for the circumstance that the dying woman had seen both Enid Vane and Mr. Evandale during her last moments. Flossy wondered angrily why Sabina had been so foolish as to admit them. She had heard nothing from Enid, who had kept her room for a couple of days after her return from Mrs. Meldreth's death-bed; but she was certain that something was now known to the girl which had not been known before. Flossy had tried to question her, to reprove her even for going into the houses of the sick poor; but there had been a look in the girl's eyes, a frozen defiance and horror in her face, which made Mrs. Vane shrink back aghast. Though silent and not very demonstrative in manner, Enid had hitherto never shown any dislike to Flossy, and had been as scrupulously attentive to her wishes as if she were still a child; but these days of passive obedience were past. Enid now quietly did what she chose. She seldom spoke to Florence at all; and on several occasions she had maintained her own purpose and choice with a calmness and steadfastness which had almost terrified Mrs. Vane. Who would have thought that Enid had a character? The girl had emancipated herself from all control, without words, without open rebellion; she had looked Flossy straight in the face once or twice, and Flossy had been compelled to yield.