‘Yes!’ says he. ‘And yet that night when the Professor gave you something that might have led to death, were you frightened then?’
‘I think I have explained that,’ says she, with a slight touch of dignity.
‘True.’ He continues the slow pacing to and fro upon the garden-path that he has taken up occasionally during this interview. ‘There is nothing more, then, that you can tell me? The lady of whom you speak, who used to kiss you, was perhaps your mother?’
‘I think so—I believe it,’ says the girl. She turns to him a face flushed and gratified. ‘Mr. Wyndham, it was kind of you to call her that—a lady! To me, too, she seems a lady, and, besides that, an angel.’
A lady! Wyndham’s kindly instincts go out to this poor waif and stray with an extreme sense of pity. A lady! Very likely, but perhaps no wife. The mother, if a lady, has certainly left the gentle manners of good birth to this poor child, but nothing else. A vindictive anger against the vices of this life in which he lives, and a still greater anger against the bétises of society that would not admit this girl into their ranks, however faultless she may be, because of a blot upon her birth, stirs his soul. That she is one of the great unknown seems very clear to him, but does not prevent his determination to hunt out that scoundrel Moore and break his hold over the girl. In the meantime, it would be well for her to mix with her kind.
‘About a companion,’ says he. ‘You told me you were anxious to continue your studies. I think I know a lady—elderly, refined, and gentle—who would be able to help you. You could go out with her.’
‘I shall not go out of this house,’ says the girl. She has begun to tremble again. ‘Mr. Wyndham, do not ask me to do that. Even’—slowly, but steadily—‘if you did ask me, I should refuse. I will not go where I can be found. This lady you speak of, if she will come and live with me, and teach me—I should like that; but—’
‘You will require very little teaching, I think,’ says Wyndham, who has been struck by the excellence of both her manners and her speech, considering her account of her former life.
‘I know nothing,’ says she calmly; ‘but, as I told you, I had read a good deal, and for the past three years I used to go as nursery governess to a Mrs. Blaquiere, who lived in Westmoreland Road. I used to lunch with her and the children, and she was very kind to me; and she taught me a good deal in other ways—society ways.’
‘You were an apt pupil,’ says he gravely, a little doubtfully, perhaps.