“Why shouldn’t she?” I asked, hardly remembering of whom it was I was speaking.
“O! I don’t know,” she said. “She may have a different temperament to mine, and of course heaps more wisdom. But I couldn’t, myself, have stood another week of it.”
“Of what? Of the young lady?”
“Of everything. It was a horrible household. And the Marquis himself was, I really think, half demented.”
She was frankly outspoken, you observe. I had turned, facing her, and, watching her eyes, manœuvred to keep their inquisition from escaping beside and beyond me—a quite useless precaution.
“And your young pupil herself?” I asked. “Was she as impossible?”
“Tel père, telle fille,” answered Miss Brooking—“all affability at one moment and fury the next. I think she was neurotic, poor girl; and she led a fearful life of it with that madman. I couldn’t have stood it any longer; it frightened and offended me; and so I cut the connexion. But I hope——” she looked at me in sudden hesitation.
“Not in the least,” I said. “There is no apology called for on behalf of my step-sister. She has twice your years, and I should think twenty times your inflexibility and only a fraction of your sensitiveness. She has done very well, I understand, and has come to be quite an influence for good in the household.”
“I am so glad,” said the girl. “There was room for it, I am sure. And so you are on your way back to Paris—at once?”
“That depends upon my travelling-companion,” I said. “This is all a novelty to her, and she likes to linger over it.”