"It is so, Miss Rachel, or I wouldn't; she says things that she shouldn't, and I can't stop her!"
Rachel still leaned back in her chair, looking out of the window. This nightmare grew worse every moment; it was like a labyrinth to which she had lost the guiding thread. She could not question a servant, but she knew, intuitively, that Zélie had gossiped of her engagement. It was not hard to divine the curiosity it must have excited, for Belhaven had been a devoted admirer of Eva Astry's and had never before bestowed a glance on her sister. Rachel's cheek reddened at the thought.
"I think we won't discuss it further, Bantry," she said at last.
But the old woman was not satisfied. "You'll speak to Miss Eva, Miss?"
Rachel looked up and met her eyes. "You think it's necessary?"
Bantry nodded. "That girl mustn't stay in this house, Miss Rachel."
Rachel turned away, resting her chin in her hand, and conscious of a thrill of alarm. What did the Scotchwoman mean? She knew that Bantry's intentions were the best,—nothing else would have influenced her to even listen to her suggestions,—but she was filled with disgust at the nearer prospect of the situation. To be the subject of idle gossip, perhaps even of scandal, was degrading. She felt suddenly that the guidance of her affairs had slipped out of her own hands, that in assuming the responsibility for Eva's actions she had lost control of her own. The feeling of unreality, so poignant the night before, was again with her, but it clothed her now with the fantastic shape of a masquerader; her little world was real enough, but she was no longer playing her own part in it. Instead she had assumed a character that she did not even know by heart, and she had the despairing feeling that she was sure to be caught and stripped of her borrowed plumes.
"It's not right to keep the thing in the house," Bantry resumed; "the tongue in her head's a scandal for decent folks to hear. You can take my word for it, Miss Rachel, dear; I wouldn't speak if I didn't have to!"
"Well, we won't say anything more about it," Rachel replied, and her voice, even in her own ears, sounded a long way off. The thing was insufferable, yet, perhaps, she would have to speak to Eva.
Eva had long ago discarded Bantry as too old and too unfashionable; she employed instead a little French girl who wore charmingly appropriate black frocks and coquettish caps and aprons. Sidney Billop had once been caught kissing Zélie in the pantry; he had never done it but once, for it was his mother who caught him. Dr. Macclesfield remarked upon that occasion that some men never went to Hades for punishment, they found a private one in the bosoms of their families. Sidney found his on emerging from the pantry and one scorching was enough; he had occasion afterwards to cherish the ancient apothegm that a burnt child fears the fire.