“No, Mary; not while you look like that, and refuse to tell me your trouble. I am your mistress, and must exert my authority for your good. Tell me at once what is the matter.”
“I'd bite my tongue off sooner.”
“You are wrong, Mary. I am sure I should be your best friend. I feel much indebted to you for the attention and the affection you have shown me, and I am grieved to see you so despondent. Make a friend of me. There—think it over, and talk to me again to-morrow.”
Mary Wells took the true servant's view of Lady Bassett's kindness. She looked at it as a trap; not, indeed, set with malice prepense, but still a trap. She saw that Lady Bassett meant kindly at present; but, for all that, she was sure that if she told the truth, her mistress would turn against her, and say, “Oh! I had no idea your trouble arose out of your own imprudence. I can do nothing for a vicious girl.”
She resolved therefore to say nothing, or else to tell some lie or other quite wide of the mark.
Deplorable as this young woman's situation was, the duplicity and coarseness of mind which had brought her into it would have somewhat blunted the mental agony such a situation must inflict; but it was aggravated by a special terror; she knew that if she was found out she would lose the only sure friend she had in the world.
The fact is, Mary Wells had seen a great deal of life during the two years she was out of the reader's sight. Rhoda had been very good to her; had set her up in a lodging-house, at her earnest request. She misconducted it, and failed: threw it up in disgust, and begged Rhoda to put her in the public line. Rhoda complied. Mary made a mess of the public-house. Then Rhoda showed her she was not fit to govern anything, and drove her into service again; and in that condition, having no more cares than a child, and plenty of work to do, and many a present from Rhoda, she had been happy.
But Rhoda, though she forgave blunders, incapacity for business, and waste of money, had always told her plainly there was one thing she never would forgive.
Rhoda Marsh had become a good Christian in every respect but one. The male rake reformed is rather tolerant; but the female rake reformed is, as a rule, bitterly intolerant of female frailty; and Rhoda carried this female characteristic to an extreme both in word and in deed. They were only half-sisters, after all; and Mary knew that she would be cast off forever if she deviated from virtue so far as to be found out.
Besides the general warning, there had been a special one. When she read Mary's first letter from Huntercombe Hall Rhoda was rather taken aback at first; but, on reflection, she wrote to Mary, saying she could stay there on two conditions: she must be discreet, and never mention her sister Rhoda in the house, and she must not be tempted to renew her acquaintance with Richard Bassett. “Mind,” said she, “if ever you speak to that villain I shall hear of it, and I shall never notice you again.”