‘My dear girl, what is the matter with you?’
I suppose the question was stupid or ill-timed, or perhaps I don’t understand the ways of women, for instead of doing Miss Anstruther any good, it changed her silent tears into such a storm of grief that I was quite alarmed. I have often seen Janie cry (indeed, my little woman is rather fond of working her hydraulics on very small occasions), and I have been the unwilling witness at times to a good many tears from various members of the fair sex; but never in all my life have I seen such a tempest of passionate rain as poured from Margaret Anstruther’s eyes this evening. She sobbed so violently and with so little restraint, that I began to be alarmed for the effect of her emotion, both on her horse and herself, and begged and entreated her to be calm, when all of a sudden, to my astonishment, the storm passed as quickly as it had arisen; and, except for her heaving bosom and sobbing breath, she was herself again.
‘What must you think of me?’ she inquired, turning her liquid eyes, still swimming in tears, upon my countenance. ‘I must have seemed so rude, so ungrateful to you both.’
‘Think!’ I stammered, remembering all I have thought of her conduct during the last few days; ‘I don’t think anything, Miss Anstruther; only I am afraid you cannot be happy with us or here.’
‘Oh, it is not that!’ she exclaimed earnestly. ‘Neither place nor people can make any difference to me. Dear Janie is everything that is kind; and you—you have been very patient with me—but nothing can lift off the humiliation, the degradation, that I feel in being here at all.’
‘Degradation!’ I repeated, rather nettled at the term.
‘Yes, degradation!’ she said emphatically; ‘else why am I in this country? what is my place in India? I have an uncle here, it is true; but so have I uncles in England. Why was Colonel Anstruther chosen by my guardians as the one most fitted to offer me a home? Tell me that.’
‘He is rich, and a bachelor,’ I commenced; ‘and living alone, naturally—’