Phillis looked utterly amazed. Though her mistress did not speak another word, there was something in her manner—her perfect, quiet conviction of innocence, self-asserted, though without any open self-defense, which struck the woman more than any amount of anger would have done.
"If I've made a mistake, I'm sure I beg your pardon, ma'am," began she quite humbly.
"What for? Except for receiving and bringing to me privately a letter which should have been left with Barker at the door, it being Barker's business, and not yours. Remember that another time. Now take the letter to the study, and go."
Phillis hesitated. She looked again and again at that calm, proud, innocent lady, whom she had so wickedly misjudged and maligned, how far and how fatally her own conscience alone could tell. And Phillis knew what innocence was, for, poor woman, she had known what it was not. Malice also she knew; and judging her mistress by herself, she trembled.
"If you're going to bear spite against me for this, I'd best give warning at once, Mrs. Grey—only it would nigh break my heart to leave the children."
"I have no wish for you to leave the children, and I never bear spite against anybody. Life is not long enough for it," added Mrs. Grey, sighing. Then, with a sudden impulse, if by any means she could smooth matters and win a little household peace, "I desire to be a good mistress to you, Phillis; why should you not be a good servant to me? You love the children; you are to them a most faithful nurse; why can not you believe that I shall be a faithful mother? Let us turn over a new leaf, and begin again."
She held out her hand, and Phillis took it; looked hard in her mistress's face—the kind, friendly face, that was not ashamed to be a friend even to a poor servant; then, with something very like a sob, she turned and ran out of the room.
But when she was gone, Christian sat down exhausted. With a desperate self-control she had wrenched herself out of Phillis's power, she had saved herself and her husband from the suspicion that it was possible Dr. Grey's wife could receive, or give occasion to receive, a secret letter, a love-letter, from any man; but when the effort was over she broke down. Convulsive sobs, one after the other, shook her, until she felt as if her very life were departing. And in the midst of this agony appeared—Miss Gascoigne.
Aunt Henrietta had spent the whole night, except a brief space for sleeping, in thinking over and talking over her duties and her wrongs, the two being mixed up together in inextinguishable confusion. Almost any subject, after being churned up in such a nature as hers for twelve mortal hours, would at the end look quite different from what it did at first, or what it really was. And so, with all honesty of purpose, and with the firmest conviction that it was the only means of saving her brother-in-law and his family from irretrievable misery and disgrace, poor Miss Gascoigne had broken through all her habits, risen, dressed, and breakfasted at an unearthly hour, and there she stood at the Lodge door at nine in the morning, determined to "do her duty," as she expressed it, but looking miserably pale, and vainly restraining her agitation so as to keep up a good appearance "before the servants."
"That will do, Barker. You need not disturb the master; I came at this early hour just for a little chat with your mistress and the children."