“Oh, no, not a great help. I’m interested in his work, and so grateful to him for what he did for me ten years ago in saving my life, that I’m most eager to do anything I can. It isn’t much, of course.”
“You are doing the things that my daughter ought to do herself,” said Lady Eridge.
“Do you mean that I ought not to do them?” asked Rhoda anxiously.
But the old lady answered quite eagerly:
“By no means. I am hoping that she will see now just what she ought to be doing herself, and that she may be induced to take up her duties,” said Lady Eridge. “As it is, she spends far too much time away from home. If she found an interest in her husband’s pleasures she would not find so much temptation to go abroad and to town.”
“Somehow it doesn’t seem natural to expect her to take an interest in making catalogues, and work of that sort,” said Rhoda. “She is so brilliant, so—so lively, that I’m sure she would look upon such occupations as too dry for her.”
“Since they are not too dry for you, why should they be for her?”
“Well, I was always a staid, quiet person, not a bit like Lady Sarah.”
The marchioness looked at her keenly, and Rhoda blushed.
“Do you think,” suggested the girl in a hesitating manner, “that it is right for me to do what I am doing? It seemed so natural, when I first came, and found Sir Robert rather helpless in the midst of the notes that he couldn’t read, to take up the easy and pleasant work of helping him, that I fell into it without, perhaps, considering whether I was not taking too much upon myself. Now I begin already to realise that my position is a little difficult, and to wonder whether I ought to go away.”