“And don’t you recollect a very pretty, rather timid, fair-haired woman who brought the children? We all used to admire her. She was a particularly graceful, refined-looking creature. She had read a great deal and was quite cultivated. I often used to think she must feel very solitary at Craddock, with not a soul to sympathize with her tastes. Mr. and Mrs. Walker used to preach to her, poor soul, reproving her love of reading, which took her thoughts away from her duties and her sphere.”
Madame Bertaux snorted significantly. Lady Engleton had remarked a strange, sad look in Ellen Jervis’s eyes, and owned to having done her best to circumvent the respected pastor and his wife, by lending her books occasionally, and encouraging her to think her own thoughts, and get what happiness she could out of her communings with larger spirits than she was likely to find in Craddock. Of course Mrs. Walker now gave Lady Engleton to understand that she was partly responsible for the poor woman’s misfortune. She attributed it to Ellen’s having had “all sorts of ideas in her head!”
“I admit that if not having all sorts of ideas in one’s head is a safeguard, the unimpeachable virtue of a district is amply accounted for.”
Professor Theobald chuckled. He enquired if Lady Engleton knew Mrs. Temperley’s motive in adopting the child.
“Oh, partly real kindness; but I think, between ourselves, that Mrs. Temperley likes to be a little eccentric. Most people have the instinct to go with the crowd. Hadria Temperley has the opposite fault. She loves to run counter to it, even when it is pursuing a harmless course.”
Some weeks had now passed since the arrival of the two Professors. The meetings in the Priory garden had been frequent. They had affected for the better Professor Theobald’s manner. Valeria’s laws had curbed the worst side of him, or prevented it from shewing itself so freely. He felt the atmosphere of the little society, and acknowledged that it was “taming the savage beast.” As for his intellect it took to blazing, as if, he said, without false modesty, a torch had been placed in pure oxygen.
“My brain takes fire here and flames. I should make a very creditable beacon if the burning of brains and the burning of faggots were only of equal value.”
The little feud between him and Mrs. Temperley had been patched up. She felt that she had been rude to him, on one occasion at any rate, and desired to make amends. He had become more cautious in his conduct towards her.
During this period of the Renaissance, as Hadria afterwards called the short-lived epoch, little Martha was visited frequently. Her protectress had expected to have to do battle with hereditary weakness on account of her mother’s sufferings, but the child shewed no signs of this. Either the common belief that mental trouble in the mother is reflected in the child, was unfounded, or the evil could be overcome by the simple beneficence of pure air, good food, and warm clothing.
Hadria had begun to feel a more personal interest in her charge. She had taken it under her care of her own choice, without the pressure of any social law or sentiment, and in these circumstances of freedom, its helplessness appealed to her protective instincts. She felt the relationship to be a true one, in contradistinction to the more usual form of protectorate of woman to child.