Mrs. Doran was especially devoted to Mr. Dugdale, to whom she owed the prosperous position which she had held in the household at the Deane for so many years now, that she was as much a part of the place to the inhabitants as the forest trees or the family portraits. Consequently she was not particularly attached to Mrs. Carteret, and presumed occasionally to criticise that lady's proceedings after a fashion which, had she been aware of it, would have gone far to fortify her in one of her favourite and most frequently-expressed opinions, that it was a great mistake to keep servants too long. "They always presume upon it, and become impertinent and troublesome."
But Mrs. Carteret would never have ventured to include Mrs. Doran among the "servants" otherwise than in her most private cogitations. Rose was a privileged person there, by a more sacred if not a stronger right than that of Mrs. Carteret herself.
But on this bright, beautiful day, when the old man had come out upon the terrace to bask awhile in the genial sunshine, why was Rose Doran with him? Ordinarily he had younger, fairer companions, in whose faces and voices there were many happy, sad memories for him, and whose love and care brightened the days fast going down to the last setting of the sun of his life. They were absent to-day, and the two to whom, of all the numerous household at the Deane, the day had most of retrospective meaning were alone together.
"It's wonderful how well I remember her, sir," Rose was saying; "sometimes that is. There's many a day I disremember her entirely, but when I do think about her--as to-day--I can see her plain. And I'm glad, somehow, I never saw her in her grandeur; for if I did, an' all the years that have gone by since then, I couldn't but think no one else had a right to it."
"I understand what you mean, Rose, and when I remember her, sometimes, as you say, it isn't in her grandeur, but as she was when you and she came home first;
"Yes, sir, and you saw us goin' in at the door of the little inn--who'd ever think there'd be a hotel as big as Morrison's, and a deal cleaner, in the very same place now?--and you not knowin' us, and she seein' you in a minute. Isn't it strange, Mr. Dugdale, to remember it after twenty, ay, more than twenty years? How long is it then, sir, rightly?"
"Twenty-three years and some months, Rose."
"True for you, sir. And now Miss Gerty's to be her own mistress, and no one to say by your leave or with your leave to her, the darling! The master would have been a proud man, rest his soul! this day."
The old man did not notice her remark. But after a little while, as if he had been thinking over it, he bowed the bent head still lower, and moved the thin white hands, and sighed.
"Are you chilly at all, sir?" asked his quickly-observant companion. "The sun is shifting a little; would you like to go in?"