“I have been in the house ever since. My lady has taken a younger person. You see I am very old. I do nothing regular now. But I keep about.”
“You look very strong and well,” said Newman, observing the erectness of her figure, and a certain venerable rosiness in her cheek.
“Thank God I am not ill, sir; I hope I know my duty too well to go panting and coughing about the house. But I am an old woman, sir, and it is as an old woman that I venture to speak to you.”
“Oh, speak out,” said Newman, curiously. “You needn’t be afraid of me.”
“Yes, sir. I think you are kind. I have seen you before.”
“On the stairs, you mean?”
“Yes, sir. When you have been coming to see the countess. I have taken the liberty of noticing that you come often.”
“Oh yes; I come very often,” said Newman, laughing. “You need not have been wide-awake to notice that.”
“I have noticed it with pleasure, sir,” said the ancient tirewoman, gravely. And she stood looking at Newman with a strange expression of face. The old instinct of deference and humility was there; the habit of decent self-effacement and knowledge of her “own place.” But there mingled with it a certain mild audacity, born of the occasion and of a sense, probably, of Newman’s unprecedented approachableness, and, beyond this, a vague indifference to the old proprieties; as if my lady’s own woman had at last begun to reflect that, since my lady had taken another person, she had a slight reversionary property in herself.
“You take a great interest in the family?” said Newman.