“Oh, many thanks, madame! The little one will be asleep, you see. I shall have to chloroform both her and the old lady to get her, you know.”
“Do not annoy me with the details. Only do your task as silently and efficiently as possible, and look to me for your reward as soon as you return!” Mrs. de Vere exclaimed, with haughty impatience.
“I go then at once,” Finette answered, in a cringing tone.
“My blessings and my thanks go with you!” exclaimed her wayward mistress.
“I don’t know about that,” the clever maid muttered, when she found herself alone in the darkness of the hall. “You’re a capricious one as ever I see. Maybe by to-morrow you’ll make up your quarrel with your boy-husband and want to undo all I’ve done to please you to-night.”
She crept softly along the hall, and knelt down and applied her ear to the key-hole at the old lady’s door. There came to her distinctly the deep breathing of one asleep.
“Deep in the arms of Morpheus!” she muttered, grimly. “And she never locks her door at night. Come, I do not think I’m going to have vair mooch trouble getting the brat away.”
She slid along the floor and went softly down-stairs to prepare for her evil errand. To do so she had to go out to the stables to saddle a horse.
As she was going softly past the summer-house, she started on coming face to face with a female figure in white with a shawl thrown over its head.
“Oh, Miss Finette, don’t holler, please! ’Tain’t nobuddy but Nance! I’se been to an ebenin’ party, an’ gwine to slip inter de back do’ easy,” half whispered the voice of one of the negro house-maids.