A figure emerged from the gooseberry bushes, where it had been stooping out of sight.
"What are you making that noise for, Jean?"
"I want Oswald, aunt Marie."
"Well, you must have patience. He will come in good time."
The tone was not unkind; it was only indifferent. Mrs. or Madame Collier was not a person to enter into a child's desires.
Jean had no mother. She could barely remember her mother. Mrs. Collier, the widowed sister of Mr. Trevelyan, had lived there almost as far back as Jean's memory could reach, keeping house for her brother, precisely as old Mrs. Willoughby had lived with old Sir John Devereux, keeping house for him since Sybella's infancy. Sybella's complaints of many widowers in the neighbourhood was not without foundation.
Mrs. Collier's real name was Maria. Having married a Frenchman—in virtue of which she was still known as Madame Collier—and having spent her married life abroad, she preferred to be called 'Marie.' She was perhaps some five years older than Sybella, with the air of twenty years' seniority. She was angular in make, with high cheek-bones, marked feature, iron-grey hair, and permanent sunburn. Moreover, she wore caps indoors and old fashioned bonnets out of doors. She could occasionally appear en grande tenue; yet her usual attire was a very embodiment of plainness. At this moment, she had on a rusty black alpaca, frayed at the edges; a big crochet shawl, secured in front by a skewer-like pin; and an enormous garden hat of untrimmed straw, reminiscence of foreign life.
Marie Collier had been tossed early upon her own feet, and forced to stand alone, if she would stand at all. This was bracing, to begin with! Probably she could never, under any conditions, have been turned into a helpless young (?) lady of thirty-nine, unable to endorse a cheque, but no doubt a somewhat different creature might under differing influences have emerged from the chrysalis stage of existence.
The Trevelyan nature was one which needed softening, since it stiffened easily; and softening influences had not in her case been abundant. Both her early life and her married life had been to a great extent hardening.
In some measure the same conditions surrounded the little Jean. There were barriers of repression, of non-comprehension, of outward coldness, fencing her in. But Jean was an Ingram as well as a Trevelyan. She had inherited from the two families a jumble of opposite characteristics. There was all the Trevelyan pride, with any amount of Ingram tenderness. There was the Trevelyan reserve, with the Ingram craving for sympathy. There was the Trevelyan hauteur, with the Ingram shyness. There was the Trevelyan disdain, with the Ingram susceptibility. There was all the force of the Trevelyan will, and with that there were odd touches of the Ingram readiness to yield.