"Either a gov'ness or a lady's-maid out of place," said Mrs. Mogg decisively. "I thought she was a gov'ness until I see the sovereigns in her purse, and then made up my mind she was a lady's-maid as had given up her place either through a death, or the family going abroad or giving up housekeeping; and these were the sovereigns which she had just got from the wardrobe-shop for the perquisites and etceteras which she had brought away with her."
"You're a clear-headed one, you are," said Mr. Mogg, looking at his wife with great delight. "Has she had anything to eat?"
"O yes," said Mrs. Mogg, giggling with some asperity; "she brought a lettice in with her, I suppose; for when I went up to ask her whether I should get-in any little trifle for breakfast, I found her eating of it, and dropping some lumps of sugar into a tumbler of water."
"Well, that's beastly," said Mr. Mogg. "These foreigners are disgusting in their ways, one always heard; but how did you make her understand you about breakfast?"
"Lor' bless yer, man, she speaks English first-rate--so well, that when I first see her, I thought she was a countrywoman of mine from Norfolk."
"Well, so long as she pays regularly, and don't stop out late at night, it don't matter to us where she comes from," said Mr. Mogg, stretching out his arms and indulging in a hearty yawn. "Now, Martha, get me my pipe; and when you have cleared these things away, come and sit down, and let's have a quiet talk about how we are to get rid of the German teacher in the back attic."
The newly-arrived tenant of the second floor, whom these worthies in the kitchen were thus discussing, was walking up and down her room in much the same manner as she had paced the platform at Lymington or the Prado at Marseilles. It was very lucky that the occupant of the drawing-room---a gentleman who taught noblemen and senators the art of declamation--had not on that evening one of his usual classes, in which budding orators were accustomed to deliver Mark Antony's speech over the sofa-pillow transformed for the nonce into the dead body of Caesar, and where, to encourage his pupils, the professor would set forth that his name was Norval, and proceed to bewail the bucolic disposition of his parent, or the grinding sound of the heels above would have sadly interfered with the lesson. It was well that Pauline was not interrupted; for the demon of rage and jealousy was at work within her. The burning shame consequent on the belief that she had been deceived and made a fool of nearly maddened her; and as every phase of the deceit to which she now imagined she had fallen so ready a victim rose before her mind, she clasped her arms above her head and groaned aloud.
"To think," she cried, "that I, who had known him so long and so intimately--I, who had been his companion in his plottings and intrigues, who had sat by, night after night and day after day, watching the patience and skill with which he prepared the pitfalls for others,--that I should be so blind, so weak, so besotted, as to fall into them myself! Lies from the first, and lie upon lie! A lie to the man Calverley, whose agent he pretended he would be; a lie to the old man Claxton, who obtained the place for him, and sent him the money by the pale-faced woman; then a lie to me,--a cleverer kind of lie, a lie involving some tracasserie, for I am not one to be deceived in the ordinary manner. To me he admitted he intended playing false with the others; and now I am reckoned among those whom he has hoodwinked and befooled!
"The notion that came across me at that place! It must be true! He never meant to come there; he sent me on a fool's errand, and he would never be within miles of the spot. The whole thing was a trick, a well-planned trick, from the first; well-planned, and so plausible too! The flight to Weymouth, then to Guernsey; hours of departure of trains and steamer all noted and arranged. What a cunning rogue! What a long-headed plausible rascal! And the money, the two thousand pounds --many would be deceived by that. He thought I would argue that if he had intended to leave me, he never would have handed over to me those bank-notes.
"But I know him better. He is a vaurien, swindler, liar; but though I suppose he never loved me in the way that other people understand love, I have been useful to him, and he has become used to me; so used, that he cannot bear to think of me in misery or want. So he gave me the money to set his mind at ease, that my reproachful figure should not rise between him and his new-found happiness. Does he think that money can compensate me for the mental agony that I shall suffer always, that I suffer now? Does he think that it will salve my wounded pride, that it will do away with the misery and degradation I feel? And having been cheated by a shallow artifice, will money deprive me of my memory, and stop the current of my thoughts? Because I shall not starve, can money bereave me of my fancies, or keep away mental pictures it will drive me mad to contemplate? I can see them all now; can see him with her; can hear the very phrases he will use, and can imagine his manner when he talks of love to her. How short a time it seems since I listened to those burning words from the same lips! How well I remember each incident in the happy journey from Marseilles, the pleasant days at Genoa, the long stay at Florence! Where has he gone now, I wonder? To what haunt of luxury and ease has he taken his new toy? Fool that I am to remain here dreaming and speculating, when I want to know, when I must know! I must and will find out where they are; and then quickness, energy, perseverance--he has praised them more than once when they served him--shall be brought into play to work his ruin."