A Terrible Secret: A Novel

by May Agnes Fleming

Then the door opened and closed, and she was gone.

CHAPTER III.

HOW THEY MET.

Miss Stuart went back to the workroom, and to the dozen or more young women there assembled. If she was a shade paler than her wont they were not likely to notice it—if she was more silent even than usual, why silence was always Miss Stuart's forte. Only the young person to whom Miss Catheron had given the sovereign looked at her curiously, and said point blank:

"I say, Miss Stuart, who was that? what did she want?" And the dark, haughty eyes of Miss Stuart had lifted from the peach satin on which she worked, and fixed themselves icily upon her interrogator:

"It was a lady I never saw before," she answered frigidly. "What she wanted is certainly no business of yours, Miss Hatton."

Miss Hatton flounced off with a muttered reply; but there was that about Edith that saved her from open insult—a dignity and distance they none of them could overreach. Besides, she was a favorite with madame and the forewoman. So silently industrious, so tastefully neat, so perfectly trustworthy in her work. Her companions disliked and distrusted her; she held herself aloof from them all; she had something on her mind—there was an air of mystery about her; they doubted her being an English girl at all. She would have none of their companionship; if she had a secret she kept it well; in their noisy, busy midst she was as much alone as though she were on Robinson Crusoe's desert island. Outwardly those ten months had changed her little—her brilliant, dusk beauty was scarcely dimmed—inwardly it had changed her greatly, and hardly for the better.

There had been a long and bitter struggle before she found herself in this safe haven. For months she had drifted about without rudder, or compass, or pilot, on the dark, turbid sea of London. She had come to the great city friendless and alone, with very little money, and very little knowledge of city life. She had found lodgings easily enough, cheap and clean, and had at once set about searching for work. On the way up she had decided what she must do—she would become a nursery governess or companion to some elderly lady, or she would teach music. But it was one thing to resolve, another to do. There were dozens of nursery governesses and companions to old ladies wanting in the columns of the Times, but they were not for her. "Where are your references?" was the terrible question that met her at every turn. She had no references, and the doors of the genteel second and third-rate houses shut quietly in her face.

Young and pretty, without references, money or friends, how was she ever to succeed? If she had been thirty and pock-marked she might have triumphed even over the reference business: as it was, her case seemed hopeless. It was long, however, before her indomitable spirit would yield. Her money ran low, she pawned several articles of jewelry and dress to pay for food and lodging. She grew wan and hollow-eyed in this terrible time—all her life long she could never recall it without a shudder.

Five months passed; despair, black and awful, filled her soul at last. The choice seemed to lie between going out as an ordinary servant and starving. Even as a housemaid she would want this not-to-be-got-over reference. In this darkest-hour before the dawn she saw Madame Mirebeau's advertisement for sewing girls, and in sheer despair applied. Tall, handsome girls of good address, were just what madame required, and somehow—it was the mercy of the good God no doubt—she was taken. For weeks after she was kept under close surveillance, she was so very unlike the young women who filled such situations—then the conviction became certainty that Miss Stuart had no sinister designs on the ruby velvets, the snowy satins, and priceless laces of her aristocratic customers—that she really wanted work and was thoroughly capable of doing it. Nature had made Edith an artist in dressmaking; her taste was excellent; madame became convinced she had found a treasure. Only one thing Miss Stuart steadfastly refused to do—that was to wait in the shop. "I have reasons of my own for keeping perfectly quiet," she said, looking madame unflinchingly in the eyes. "If I stay in the shop I may—though it is not likely—be recognized; and then I should be under the necessity of leaving you immediately."