‘Miss Wade! Poor Dawes is devoted to you; would do anything for you!’
I knew beforehand she would say so; I was quite prepared for it; I only answered, it was not for me to contradict my Mistress; I must go.
‘I hope, Miss Wade,’ she returned, instantly assuming the tone of superiority she had always so thinly concealed, ‘that nothing I have ever said or done since we have been together, has justified your use of that disagreeable word, “Mistress.” It must have been wholly inadvertent on my part. Pray tell me what it is.’
I replied that I had no complaint to make, either of my Mistress or to my Mistress; but I must go.
She hesitated a moment, and then sat down beside me, and laid her hand on mine. As if that honour would obliterate any remembrance!
‘Miss Wade, I fear you are unhappy, through causes over which I have no influence.’
I smiled, thinking of the experience the word awakened, and said, ‘I have an unhappy temper, I suppose.’
‘I did not say that.’
‘It is an easy way of accounting for anything,’ said I.
‘It may be; but I did not say so. What I wish to approach is something very different. My husband and I have exchanged some remarks upon the subject, when we have observed with pain that you have not been easy with us.’