“Mademoiselle Vallé tells me you have an elderly nurse you are very fond of. She seems to belong to a class of servants almost extinct.”
“I love her,” Robin faltered—because the sudden reminder brought back a pang to her. There was a look in her eyes which faltered also. “She loves me. I don’t know how——” but there she stopped.
“Such women are very valuable to those who know the meaning of their type. I myself am always in search of it. My dear Miss Brent was of it, though of a different class.”
“But most people do not know,” said Robin. “It seems old-fashioned to them—and it’s beautiful! Dowie is an angel.”
“I should like to secure your Dowie for my housekeeper and myself,”—one of the greatest powers of the celebrated smile was its power to convince. “A competent person is needed to take charge of the linen. If we can secure an angel we shall be fortunate.”
A day or so later she said to Coombe in describing the visit.
“The child’s face is wonderful. If you could but have seen her eyes when I said it. It is not the mere beauty of size and shape and colour which affect one. It is something else. She is a little flame of feeling.”
The “something else” was in the sound of her voice as she answered.
“She will be in the same house with me! Sometimes perhaps I may see her and talk to her! Oh! how grateful I am!” She might even see and talk to her as often as she wished, it revealed itself and when she and Mademoiselle got into their hansom cab to drive away, she caught at the Frenchwoman’s hand and clung to it, her eyelashes wet,
“It is as if there must be Goodness which takes care of one,” she said. “I used to believe in it so—until I was afraid of all the world. Dowie means most of all. I did not know how I could bear to let her go away. And since her husband and her daughter died, she has no one but me. I should have had no one but her if you had gone back to Belgium, Mademoiselle. And now she will be safe in the same house with me. Perhaps the Duchess will keep her until she dies. I hope she will keep me until I die. I will be as good and faithful as Dowie and perhaps the Duchess will live until I am quite old—and not pretty any more. And I will make economies as you have made them, Mademoiselle, and save all my salary—and I might be able to end my days in a little cottage in the country.”