“Good-bye,” answered Phemie; “and if ever you want my help again, come to me, Georgina, for I shall never come to you.”
“Why?” asked the mistress of Marshlands; and Phemie replied—“You know why as well as I do. Because you do not wish to have me here; because it is well we should walk on our separate paths, apart.”
“You always were peculiar,” observed Mrs. Basil Stondon.
“Was I?” replied Phemie. “At all events, I always (unavailingly perhaps) tried to be honest;” which retort silencing her enemy, she put her lips to Phemie’s face and bade her farewell—not sorrowing.
Phemie then went to perform a harder task, that of taking leave of Basil.
He had shut himself in what was called the library after his return from the funeral, and remained there the whole afternoon, refusing to be comforted.
Time after time Phemie gently knocked, but still obtaining no answer she went up to the nursery, and taking “Fairy” in her arms came downstairs again and rapped on the panel loudly.
“I want to speak to you,” she said. “I must speak before I go.”
He came across the room and unlocked the door and gave her admittance, and then she walked to a chair near the table at which he had been sitting, and tried to induce him to take the child from her arms, but he motioned her away.
“Mamma—Mamma Phemie,” sobbed the little girl in a passion of grief, hiding her face on Phemie’s breast, “is he sorry it was not me? Nurse says he is.”