“Ay, ay,” was the muttered answer, as Mrs. Manners clutched the child—a little, thin-limbed, cunning-eyed girl, of eight or ten years old—and pressed her to her breast, with a strain more like the gripe of a lioness than a tender woman's clasp.
Then she fell back exhausted, and took no more notice of anybody. Meliora forgot Mr. Vanbrugh's dinner, and all things else, in making a few charitable arrangements, which resulted in a comfortable tea for little Christal and “ma mie.”
Sleep had again overpowered the sick woman, who appeared to be slowly dying of that anomalous disease called decline, in which the mind is the chief agent of the body's decay. Meanwhile, Miss Vanbrugh talked in an undertone to little Christal, who, her hunger satisfied, stood, finger in mouth, watching the two ladies with her fierce black eyes—the very image of a half-tamed gipsy. Indeed, Miss Meliora seemed rather uneasy, and desirous to learn more of her companions, for she questioned the child closely.
“And is the person you call ma mie any relation to you?”
“The neighbours say she is my aunt, from the likeness. I don't know.”
“And her name is Mrs. Manners—a widow, no doubt; for I remember she was in very respectable mourning when she first came to Woodford Cottage.”
“Poor young creature!” she continued, sitting down beside the object of her compassion, who was, or seemed, asleep. “How hard to loose her husband so soon! and I dare say she has gone through great poverty—sold one thing after another to keep her alive. Why, I declare,” added the simple and unworldly Meliora, who could make a story to fit anything, “poor soul! she has even been forced to part with her wedding-ring.”
“I never had one—I scorned it!” cried the woman, leaping up with a violence that quite confounded the painter's sister. “Do you come to insult me, you smooth-tongued English lady? Ah, you shrink away. What do you know about me?”
“I don't know anything about you, indeed,” said Meliora, creeping to the door; while Olive, who could not understand the cause of half she witnessed, stood simply looking on in wonder—almost in admiration,—for there was a strange beauty, like that of a Pythoness, in the woman's attitude and mien.
“You know nothing of me? Then you shall know. I come from a country where are thousands of young girls, whose mixed blood is too pure for slavery, too tainted for freedom. Lovely, accomplished, brought up delicately, they yet have no higher future than to be the white man's passing toy—cherished, wearied of, and spurned.”