“I wonder you didn’t tell me on the ship that I was right and you wrong,” he wrote. “You did say, though, that she was high and mighty, and I told you to sit on her. But don’t you do it! She is a lady by birth and education, and I want you to treat her kindly and not let Mrs. Haynes bamboozle you into snubbing her because she is your companion. I sha’n’t like it if you do, for it will be an insult to the Leightons and a shame to us.” Then he added, “At the hotel in Worcester I fell in with a fellow who claimed to be a fortieth cousin of yours, Phineas Jones. Do you remember him? Great character. Called you cousin Lucy Ann,—said you spelled him down at a spelling-match on the word ‘dammed,’ and that he was going to call when you got home. I didn’t give him our address.”
After reading this the view from the balcony did not look so charming or the sunlight so bright, and there was a shadow on Mrs. Hallam’s face caused not so much by what Rex had written of the Homestead as by his encounter with Phineas Jones, her abomination. Why had he, of all possible persons, turned up? And what else had he told Rex of her besides the spelling episode? Everything, probably, and more than everything, for she remembered well Phineas’s loquacity, which sometimes carried him into fiction. And he talked of calling upon her, too! “The wretch!” she said, crushing the letter in her hands, as she would have liked to crush the offending Phineas.
“No bad news, I hope?” Mrs. Haynes said, stepping upon the balcony and noting the change in her friend’s expression.
Mrs. Hallam, who would have died sooner than tell of Phineas Jones, answered, “Oh, no. Rex has been to the Homestead and found out about Bertha, over whom he is wilder than ever, saying I must be kind to her and all that; as if I would be anything else.”
“Hm; yes,” Mrs. Haynes replied, an expression which always meant a great deal with her, and which in this case meant a greater dislike to Bertha and a firmer resolve to humiliate her.
It was beginning to grow dark by this time. Reentering her room, Mrs. Hallam asked, “Where is Celine? I want her to open my trunk and get out a cooler dress; this is so hot and dusty.”
But Celine was not forthcoming, and Bertha was summoned in her place. At the Metropole Bertha had occupied a stuffy little room looking into a court, while at the Grand in Paris she had slept in what she called a closet, so that now she felt as if in Paradise when she took possession of her room, which, if small and at the rear, looked out upon grass and flowers and the tall hills which encircle Aix on all sides.
“This is delightful,” she thought, as she leaned from the window inhaling the perfume of the flowers and drinking in the sweet, pure air which swept down the green hillside, where vines and fruits were growing. She, too, had found a letter waiting for her from Dorcas, who detailed every particular of Reginald’s visit to the Homestead, and dwelt at some length upon his evident admiration of Bertha’s photograph and his desire to have it.
“I don’t pretend to have your psychological presentiments,” Dorcas wrote, “but if I had I should say that Mr. Hallam would admire you when he sees you quite as much as he did your picture, and I know you will like him. You cannot help it. He will join you before long.”
Bertha knew better than Dorcas that she should like Rex Hallam, and something told her that her life after he came would be different from what it was now. For Mrs. Hallam she had but little respect, she was so thoroughly selfish and exacting, but she did not dislike her with the dislike she had conceived in a moment for Mrs. Haynes, in whom she had intuitively recognized a foe, who would tyrannize over and humiliate her worse than her employer. During her climb up-stairs she had resolved upon her course of conduct towards the lady should she attempt to browbeat her.