“I will wait and consult with Isola,” was the young girl’s thought as the train whirled her on towards London, “she will most likely know what my mother’s wishes are,” and as she thought of that mother, and the years of suffering her father’s cruelty had condemned her to endure, every feeling was absorbed in one indignant resolve to leave no means untried to have that mother righted and restored, if not to happiness, at least to peace and honour.
As the train entered the London Station, she noticed a woman clad in a long brown cloak, with a peasant’s hood drawn over her head, whom she quickly identified as Isola; not from her recollection of her nurse’s face, for here memory failed her, nor yet alone from her dress, which, though strange, seemed familiar to her, but the woman was evidently waiting and watching, and her long earnest gaze into each carriage as the train drew up at the platform, could not fail to strike the most casual observer—
“Ma bonne, ma bonne,” said Amy in a low voice, as she jumped from the train, stretching out both hands towards her nurse—
“Holy mother!” exclaimed the woman, seizing Amy’s hand, and passionately kissing it—
“Which of my two children is it that I see? The eyes, the voice, the hands, the hair are her mother’s own. My child, bless the Saints and Holy Mary whenever you look at your sweet face in the glass, for thou wilt never be without thy mother’s portrait all thy life long.”
Then followed question and answer in rapid succession. Amy ascertained from Isola that her mother had entered the convent of St. Geneviève, some few miles distant from their old home. Isola breathed not a word of her mother’s transgression, nor how she had abandoned husband and child for the caprice of a moment. Isola’s intense love for, and devotion to her mistress, blinded her to all her faults; she could see her in but one light, that of a wronged, suffering woman, and as such she spoke of her. She dwelt long upon Mr. Warden’s harshness and cruelty to his young wife, and told Amy how at length his treatment became insupportable, and they were compelled to seek another home; how that her mother had eventually taken vows in the Convent of St. Geneviève, seeking in religion the happiness she could not find in the world. Isola made no mention of the lie passed off on Mr. Warden respecting his wife’s death. To her mind the one weak point in Aimée’s character was her love for her husband and her real penitence for her fault. This to Isola was simply incomprehensible—
“The man hates you, why should you love him?” was her argument. “He treated you badly, you did well to leave him.”
Nevertheless, whatever order Aimée gave must be carried out to the very letter, and with the blind unreasoning fidelity of a dog, she obeyed her mistress’s slightest wish.
Thus it was, that intentionally or unintentionally, Isola’s narrative conveyed a very wrong impression to Amy’s mind. The young girl scarcely realized her own feelings towards her father, so completely had they been reversed—
“I could not have believed all this Isola, even from your lips,” she said passionately, “if he had not himself told me a lie, and denied my own mother to my face.”