“You, Justine! you?” cried Maude, staring hard at the dark shining eyes of the Frenchwoman, who looked too hard to have had a soft sensation in her life.
“Oui, miladi. It is my secret, and I hide him. But I too love with a grand ardour that cannot be what you call him in your tongue.”
“Appeased, Justine,” sighed Maude.
“Non, non, miladi. Ah, yais, I have him, squench, which can nevaire be squench.”
“Poor Justine!” sighed Maude; and then recovering herself, and shrinking from being so intimate with her mother’s maid. “But no, no, I could not go.”
“Why not, miladi?” said the wily Frenchwoman. “Monsieur Hector is a gentleman that an empress might trust.”
“Yes, yes; but—oh, this is dreadful.”
“Her ladyship does not think of Sir Wilters’ great sorrow if he find my young lady has lose all her hair,” said Justine, smiling as she watched the effect of her words; and a few minutes after she was attending Maude on her way to Upper Gimp Street.
The waxen lady had her head turned in the opposite direction, but the waxen gentleman watched her coming, and looked a combination of the mysterious and admiring as, closely veiled, Maude walked swiftly by Justine’s side, trembling the while, and feeling certain that every one she passed knew her errand and was watching her.
Dreading the visit as she did, it was with something like relief that she stood within the curtained door, face to face with bland, chivalrous Monsieur Hector, who rose, laid down his three days’ old copy of the Petit Journal, and bowed profoundly.