And Eleanor, now that she knew that Margaret had no intention of ousting her from her quarters at Rose Cottage, always welcomed her warmly, and many were the long conversations that the two girls enjoyed in the little arbour in the corner of the kitchen garden that had witnessed their first momentous interview.
Margaret could reach Windy Gap now in a little under an hour, for she had found out many short cuts across the grass, by means of which she avoided the long, twisting high-road that ran by the edge of the cliffs altogether. And by leaving the steep lane that led from the little village in the hollow up to Rose Cottage before it brought her to the front gate she could skirt below the wall that enclosed the domain and enter the kitchen garden by a side gate without coming in sight of the windows at all. It was Eleanor who had shown her this mode of entry and who had also told her that the early hours of the afternoon between two and four were the ones on which Margaret could most surely count on finding her alone, for Mrs. Murray always took a nap after lunch and was not visible again until tea-time. If Margaret found her days at The Cedars empty and somewhat long, Eleanor up at Rose Cottage had nothing at all to complain of in that respect.
"My dear Margaret," she said one day, "you must have led a strenuous life from your youth up if, even when you are supposed to be taking things easy, you have had such a course of study, as I am compelled to pursue in your place, mapped out for you. If your grandfather had wished you to become a naturalised Italian he couldn't have been keener on your acquiring a thorough knowledge of the language. He never writes to me, but I know he wrote a long letter to Mrs. Murray the other day hoping that I was getting on with my studies and that neither she nor Madame Martelli permitted me to mope and dream my time away in the profitless, silly way that had of late become habitual to me, and which was admirably adapted, if the habit were encouraged, to weaken my brain permanently."
Margaret coloured faintly as Eleanor quoted that passage from Mr. Anstruther's letter. For a moment she almost imagined that she could hear her grandfather's caustic voice speaking to her, and though what he had said was not particularly flattering, she knew that it contained a certain amount of truth.
"Mrs. Murray wrote back and told him," Eleanor went on, "that I was making capital progress both with my singing and with the language, and that Madame Martelli was exceedingly pleased with me. She also said that I showed no disposition at all to mope, but was as busy and as brisk as a bee from morning to night. And so I am," said Eleanor with a laugh. "Madame Martelli sees to that. We have breakfast here every morning at eight, and by a quarter to nine I am down at Milan Cottage, which is the name of Madame's house, and I study and sing with her until half-past twelve, when I come home. We lunch at one, have tea at four, and directly after tea I go down to Milan Cottage again and am taken for a little walk by Madame. At half-past seven Mrs. Murray and I dine, and at half-past nine we go to bed. And that has been my daily life for the last three weeks."
But there was no need to ask Eleanor if she was satisfied with it. Every line of her face expressed radiant happiness, and though she spoke jestingly of the way in which her nose was kept to the grindstone, Margaret knew that she was really revelling in this chance of getting the instruction in Italian that she wanted. And as for the singing lessons, their value, she declared vehemently, was beyond price to her. Any time during the last two years she would, she said, have gladly lived in a hovel, fared on bread and water, and gone barefoot and in rags for the sake of them.
"Sometimes I wake up in the night and think I am only dreaming a beautiful dream," she said, "and that when I really am awake I shall find myself back in Hampstead in the ugly little dingy room that I shared with two little girls. And then I have to light my candle and look round me and assure myself that I really am in the pretty white bedroom that Mrs. Murray has given to me here, and that my good fortune is a reality and not a dream."
"Has your life been a very unhappy one?" Margaret asked her gravely one day.
"I have often been very unhappy," Eleanor answered thoughtfully; "but that, of course, is different to having had an unhappy life. Of course, my mother's and my father's death was a great grief to me, and when the sense of the awful loss their death was to me grew less the resentment I felt at my changed circumstances made me awfully bitter and unhappy for a time. For I can tell you it was a violent change. Up to the age of thirteen I lived as if I were going to be rich all my life and was the spoilt darling of my parents and of every one round me. After that I was a pupil teacher, taken in literally out of charity, in a second-rate suburban school. I am sure for a time I must have behaved too hatefully for words, and if Miss McDonald had sent me to the workhouse it would have served me right. But she knew that she was the only friend I had, and was awfully good to me. If I had only been older when the crash came I daresay I should have been better provided with friends; but at that age I wanted no friends except my own horses and dogs, and my father and mother were always too wrapped up in each other to care to make friends. So that was really why at their death I was left so utterly stranded, and had Miss McDonald not come forward to my rescue I would have gone, I suppose, to a charity school. She was, as I say, awfully good to me. You see, she understood, and that made all the difference. She had gone through much the same sudden change of fortune herself, for she had never been brought up to work for her living either. Somehow she did not say much, but she made me see the utter uselessness of repining and taught me how much braver it was to accept things as they are and to make the best of them. And so I set my teeth and made the best of them, or rather tried to make the best of them, which isn't quite the same thing, but still the best I could do. And I was getting sort of resigned to my lot when the idea came to me that I had a voice, and I went to see Signor Vanucci. An unknown girl and a famous man like that! The utter cheek of it, Margaret! But I have told you all about it and the hopes he raised, which were only to be dashed to the ground by his unexpected death. It took me months and months to get over it; in fact, in the sense of the word I never did get over it; even the gradual down-fall of the school and the awful struggle that Miss McDonald was going through never seemed to me as real as my own disappointment. I sometimes think, Margaret, that I must be horribly selfish and heartless. And then through you, Margaret, this second chance came, and though I held back at first, I seized it gladly and mean to hold it as long as I can, although I know," she added, "how very atrociously I am behaving to you and Mrs. Murray."
"Oh!" said Margaret in surprise, for this was the very first time Eleanor had admitted as much.