Jessie was sure that she saw Rosamond Lee's maid busily stitching away when she had first entered the room, but she rose hastily and went into an inner apartment, and a moment later returned with her hand done up and her arm in a sling.
Rosamond Lee said to herself that it had been a wise stratagem on her part to make her maid exchange places with Jessie Bain until after the handsome young man should come and go.
The tasks that Rosamond Lee laid out for Jessie were cruelly hard. She would say to her each morning, as she laid out this or that bit of work:
"This must be finished by to-morrow morning."
As soon as the clock struck nine, Rosamond would seek her downy couch. Not for anything in the world would she have lost the few hours of beauty-sleep before midnight, so essential to young girl's good looks.
But there must be no beauty-sleep for the tired young girl who plied her needle.
"How dare you!" Rosamond cried. "What do you mean by loitering in this manner?"
Miss Rosamond insisted that while she was performing the duties of maid to her, Jessie must take her meals up in her room, declaring that it really took too much time for her to go and come to the dining-room to her meals.
On the third afternoon of her banishment she heard the sound of carriage-wheels, followed by the servants in the corridor crying out excitedly:
"He has come at last! Now the old gentleman and his wife will be in the seventh heaven!"