No, Monsieur de Tiraille gained nothing by that movement, only the holding of himself up to the scorn of the three eldest girls in the establishment; and after that it was that he took to sighing softly, and assuming the martyr, for he attacked the citadel of my poor heart in every conceivable way. But I fortified it with thoughts of the past, and regularly set him at defiance, my only regret—I think, I will not be sure upon that point—my only regret being that the poor exiles of whom he had written to me would suffer from this estrangement, for I knew that he could not do a great deal for them. And when I wondered whether Miss Furness would be generous, and help them out of her store, my heart whispered No, and I felt so pained and sorry, that I enclosed two sovereigns, all I had saved up, in a piece of paper, with the words—“For the poor exiles,” written inside, and gave it to him in that dear old, dog’s-eared, thumbed Nugent—dear to me from a thousand recollections!
The next time he came he was radiant with hope, but the arrows of his dark eyes glanced from the cold mail of pride with which I was armed now. I was as iron itself, while he seemed perfectly astounded. But he was mistaken: for the money sent was not in token of reconciliation, but so that others who were deserving should not suffer from our estrangement; and I can assure you that I felt very proud of my ability to crush down the love that, I am afraid, still burned in my breast.
In other respects matters went on very quietly at the Cedars; from being so fierce and snappish, Miss Furness was now quiet, and amiable, and smiling; and though I hated her most horribly, I tried to crush all my dislike down, and make the best of things. I found, too, now, that I was invited occasionally to take tea in the drawing-room, when Mrs Blunt had a few particular friends; and, altogether, they seemed to treat me differently to the way from which I suffered when I first came.
Then, too, Euphemia Campanelle Brassey being in our room made it a little better; but, for all that, I was dull, and wretched, and miserable. You know, it was so tiresome in the old days with Patty; we did not want to be always drinking Spanish liquorice water, and eating sour apples, and cakes, and gooseberries in bed—it was so childish. It was all very well sometimes; but then Patty was so ravenous, thinking of nothing else but eating, and always wanting to have what she called a feast, and making the room smell horribly of peppermint—which, in its way, is really as bad as onions. But Effie Campanelle Brassey really was a nice girl, and sensible; and, of course, as we were allowed no suppers, it was nice to have a little in our bedrooms; so we had one box that we used to call the larder, and took it in turns to keep it replenished. Sometimes we used to have sausage rolls, sometimes pork pies, and little tartlets that there was an old woman in the town used to make so nicely. But our greatest difficulty used to be about something to drink; for though we could bring home a paper bag in one hand and a parasol in the other, of course we could not carry a bottle, and you may be sure that we did not care for Spanish liquorice water, nor yet for lemonade. I should have liked bottled stout, though I did take almost a dislike to it after Patty Smith proposed to give me a Seidlitz powder, for the effervescence put me in mind of it. But, as a rule, we used to have wine—sherry or claret—in a dear, nice, champagney-looking bottle, with a silvery top, and a blue heraldic dragon sitting in a castle, with his head out of the top and his tail sticking out of the bottom—a scaly-looking dragon, like Richard Coeur de Lion’s legs in the old pictures; while the tail was all barbed like a crochet needle tied back to back to another crochet needle. And, oh, it was such fun! I believe those were the only merry times we had. The new servant always got the wine for us from a man in the town, and we used to lend her the key to put the bottle in the larder when she went up to make the beds; and I’m afraid to tell you how many bottles we drank, for it would be too shocking.
Effie Campanelle Brassey was a really dear girl, and could enter into matters so much better than Patty Smith, and it was a pleasure to sit in the dusk of a night and tell her all about our disappointments—for, of course, they were disappointments, the poor Signor being found out, and Achille proving so utterly lost to all proper feeling, and acting as he did with Miss Furness.
Chapter Twenty Two.
Memory the Twenty-Second—Weak Woman.
They say that it is natural for women to be weak, and of course they who said so must know best about it. So if woman is naturally weak, I do not think I need be very much ashamed of owning that I was the same as the rest of my sex, and willing at last to forgive poor Achille; for really he did begin to look so pale and distressed, so worn, and sallow, and miserable, and seemed so to humble himself before me, that I began to be afraid he was contemplating something dreadful. He appeared so dejected, and bent, and old, and directed at me such penitent looks, that no one with a heart beating within her breast could have resisted for long; and by degrees his sorrow began to melt away the hard, cold, icy armour in which I was encased, to sap the walls of the citadel of stone I had built round my heart, and one day—I could not help it—I could not resist the piteous look he directed at me, but forgave him with one quick, sharp glance, which brought almost a sob from his breast; while, though his eyes were cast down, I could see him swelling almost, as it were, with emotion, and I escaped from the room as soon as I possibly could, to try and calm the wild, fluttering sensation that pervaded my very being.