“Oh, Mademoiselle, it is one thing to rest, and another to allow some one else to do the same. My lady goes to bed but not to sleep. She lies awake for hours, and she is cross sometimes, but so cross! She speaks so shrill, so loud, one would suppose a calamity should happen. It is bad for the nerves to hear such sounds in the night-time. I have been afraid for Mademoiselle lest she should be disturbed. Her windows are so near, and when the house is quiet—”
“Oh, you need not be afraid for me! I sleep like a top when I once begin. Sometimes we have had dreadful thunder-storms in the night at school, and half the girls have been sitting up shivering in their dressing-gowns, but I have known nothing about them until the morning. Besides, it is such a long way round to get to Lady Sarah’s room, that I never realised before that her windows were so near.”
Mildred craned her head as she spoke to look out of the window. As she had said, the entrance to Lady Sarah’s room was some distance along the corridor, and round a corner, but, as it was situated in a wing of the house which stood out at right angles from the main wall, the window was but a few yards from Mildred’s own.
“I never realised that I was so near!” repeated the girl dreamily, and as she busied herself with the folds of the skirt Cécile frowned and bit her lip, as though annoyed with herself for an incautious remark.
“I am glad you have not been disturbed. I feared it might be so, but if Mademoiselle should any time hear a noise in the night she will understand—she will go to sleep again quite satisfied. I am always there in my lady’s dressing-room, ready to go when she calls.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll remember!” said Mildred easily; “but I am not in the least likely to hear. I can’t understand how people can go on talking after they are in bed. When I go home for the holidays I sleep with my mother, and I have so much to say that I try hard to keep awake, but I can’t. We talk for a little time, then she says something, and I repeat it over and over to myself, trying to understand what it means. It is probably the simplest thing in the world, but it seems like Greek, and while I am still trying to puzzle it out, I fall asleep and remember nothing more till the next day.”
“Oh, yes! but you are young and my lady is old. Sleep does not come to her as to you, and she is so that she cannot bear anyone to have what she has not. If she is miserable, it is her pleasure that I also should suffer.”
Mildred knitted her brows and stared at the maid in disapproving fashion.
“I don’t think you ought to talk like that, Cécile,” she said boldly. “You are always paying Lady Sarah compliments to her face, so you ought not to abuse her behind her back. Besides, I don’t think she is cross to you. She seems kinder to you than to other people. We all notice it.”
“Ah, yes!” replied Cécile scornfully; “my lady can be amiable enough when it suits; but to live with all day long, to have her as mistress—ah, Mademoiselle thinks she can understand what that means! But wait a little time, wait until Mrs Faucit shall go away and my lady is left in charge, then you shall see! You will feel for me then for what I undergo!”