“You want to know, I suppose, whether I still feel the infatuation I felt then about him?” she said. “Of course I don’t. It was a young girl’s childish fancy. But I do think he is a most sympathetic, kindly natured man, and I should be very glad, considering what my obligations are to him, if I could be of any use in taking care of his child.”
She was wondering, as she spoke, what Lady Sarah would say when she found her installed at the Mill-house. Until that moment, strange to tell, she had felt no curiosity on this point; it was only now, when she saw the view the housekeeper took of her coming, that this question suggested itself to her. However, there were some days to pass before Lady Sarah would return from abroad, and in the meantime Rhoda might pass her time very happily with the child, she thought.
And so it fell out. Within a few minutes her tête-à-tête with the housekeeper was interrupted by a message to the effect that Master Caryl wanted to see her, wanted to know whether she would have tea with him, and Rhoda, hastily divesting herself of her hat, went downstairs to the boy’s room, where she found him, flushed and eager, awaiting her coming and welcoming her with a cry of delight.
The next few days were among the happiest she had ever passed. Caryl was a charming companion, affectionate, docile on the whole, though somewhat spoilt. He had taken a great fancy to Rhoda, and would not leave her much time to herself, while Sir Robert, delighted at his son’s finding an interest in life, overwhelmed her with signs of his appreciation.
Rhoda wondered sometimes whether he did not begin to remember her; for she would find him regarding her as it were by stealth, with a frown of pain upon his face, and although he asked no questions, she felt sure that he must already be wondering whether he had not met her before.
To Rhoda the sadness in his quiet face was infinitely touching, and little by little she found ways of making herself useful to him, by copying the notes he had made concerning his curios, as well as by letting him talk to her concerning them.
“It’s very good of you to let yourself be bored, Miss Pembury,” he would say to her with a shy laugh when he had been expatiating upon the beauties of his enamels or of his old Sèvres china. “When Lady Sarah comes back, she will say that you have spoilt me. I’m not used to having my dull dissertations listened to with so much appearance of interest. And I’m quite sure,” he added archly, “that it can’t be more than an appearance.”
“Indeed I wouldn’t pretend to be interested if I were not, Sir Robert,” Rhoda assured him humbly and earnestly.
And she told the truth. She would not, indeed, have found the pictures and curios so intensely interesting as she did, if they had not belonged to the man who had once saved her life. But for his sake she liked them, and her sympathy delighted the grave and rather lonely gentleman.
He was profusely grateful to her for the pains she took in collecting and copying his notes, and in sorting his papers for him. And he said to her with intense appreciation, one day when she had succeeded in deciphering some of his notes which he himself could not read: