“Madam’ll find that there ain’t nothink ’igher than a servant. There’s a lot about service in the pypers nowadyes, crackin’ it up, like; but nobody don’t seem to remember that servants knows more about that than what other people do, and servants don’t remember it theirselves. So long as I can serve madam, just as I’ve served my boy––”
“Oh, but, Steptoe, I shall have gone to the bad.”
“That’d be all the syme to me, madam. At my time o’ life I don’t see no difference between them as ’as gone to the bad and them as ’as gone to the good, as you might sye. I only sees—people.”
Left alone Letty went back to the fire, and stood gazing down at it, her foot on the fender. So it was the end. Even Steptoe said so. In a sense she was relieved.
She was relieved at the prospect of being freed from her daily torture. The little mermaid walking on blades in the palace of the prince, and forever dumb, had known bliss, but bliss so akin to anguish that her heart was consumed by it. The very fact that the prince himself suffered from the indefinable misery which her presence seemed to bring made escape the more enticing.
She was so buried in this reflection as to have heard no sound in the house, when Steptoe announced in his stately voice: “Miss Barbara Walbrook.” Having parted from this lady half an hour earlier Letty turned in some surprise.
“I’ve come back again,” was the explanation, sent down the long room. “Don’t let William bring in tea,” the imperious voice commanded Steptoe. “We wish to be alone.” There was the same abruptness as 258 she halted within two or three feet of where Letty stood, supporting herself with a hand on the edge of the mantelpiece. “I’ve come back to tell you something. I made up my mind to it all at once—after I left you a few minutes ago. Now that I’ve done it I feel easier.”
Letty didn’t know which was uppermost in her mind, curiosity or fear. “What—what is it?” she asked, trembling.
“I’ve given up the fight. I’m out of it.”