“You must judge for yourself,” replied the Baroness, with a broad smile, “when you come to London. You’ll be your own mistress there, I suppose, and not so tied as you are here! I call it a shame to keep you dancing attendance on that brat, when there’s a nurse whose business it is to look after ’er!”
“O! but indeed it is my own wish!” said the girl, as she cuddled the sleeping baby to her bosom, and laid her lips in a long kiss upon its little mouth. “I asked leave to nurse her! She loves me and even Nurse cannot get her off to sleep as I can! And it is so beautiful to have something to love you, Madame Gobelli! In the Convent I felt so cold—so lonely! If ever I took a liking to a girl, we were placed in separate rooms! It is what I have longed for—to come out into the world and find someone to be a friend, and to love me, only me, and all for myself!”
Madame Gobelli laughed again.
“Well! you’ve only got to shew those eyes of yours, to get plenty of people to love you, and let you love them in return—that is, if the men count in your estimation of what’s beautiful!”
Harriet raised her eyes and looked at the woman who addressed her!
There was the innocence of Ignorance in them as yet, but the slumbering fire in their depths proved of what her nature would be capable, when it was given the opportunity to shew itself. Hers was a passionate temperament, yearning to express itself—panting for the love which it had never known—and ready to burst forth like a tree into blossom, directly the sun of Desire and Reciprocity shone upon it. The elder woman, who had not been without her little experiences in her day, recognised the feeling at once, and thought that she would not give a fig for the virtue of any man who was subjected to its influence.
“I don’t think that you’ll confine your attentions to babies long!” quoth the Baroness, as she encountered that glance.
“How do you know?” said her young companion.
“Ah! it’s enough that I do know, my dear! I ’ave ways and means of knowing things that I keep to myself! I ’ave friends about me too, who can tell me everything—who can ’elp me, if I choose, to give Life and Fortune to one person, and Trouble and Death to another—and woe to them that offend me, that’s all!”
But if the Baroness expected to impress Miss Brandt with her hints of terror, she was mistaken. Harriet did not seem in the least astonished. She had been brought up by old Pete and the servants on her father’s plantation to believe in witches, and the evil eye, and “Obeah” and the whole cult of Devil worship.