His old nurse’s spirits rose. Master Michael wouldn’t speak like that, she thought, if he was going to be hard and unsympathising, but she was wise enough not to show her elation.
“Of course, sir,” she agreed, “silly is no word for it! It was perfectly wild, but the wilder it was, the more mischief may come of it if we cannot help her. That is what she is now so wretched about; she thought of how it might turn our ladies, here, indeed, the whole family, against poor Captain Marmaduke and his wife, little as either deserves it,” for Mrs Shepton had not forgotten to exculpate Evelyn from all concerted share in the mad freak.
Michael’s face darkened a little.
“I don’t understand that young woman altogether,” he said; “either she is a better actress than her sister, or extraordinarily childish.”
“She is quite straightforward,” said the housekeeper, “but her sister has not allowed her to take it up deeply. She knows nothing of the angry letter from their home, or of all this trouble just now. And she has not nearly the strength of character of her sister, I am sure. Miss Raynsworth tells me that Mrs Marmaduke really forgets about it from time to time! And it must be so, or she would never have been so incautious. Why, it’s mainly thanks to her that there’s all this now.”
The smiles which had been lurking somewhere in the corners of Michael’s physiognomy now made itself visible, and broadened as he caught sight of the dubious expression it called forth on his old friend’s face.
“I can’t help thinking,” he began, half apologetically, “of the scene there might be here if it all came out. I mean nothing disrespectful to this family, nurse, when I say that they are not remarkable for their sense of humour. Christine, perhaps, has the most of it, of a rather blunt kind, but Mrs Headfort’s face would grow so long that it would never shorten again, and Felicia would certainly faint and be more melancholy than ever, if they once discovered the trick that had been played upon them.”
“Indeed, yes, sir,” Mrs Shepton replied, gravely, too decorous to join in his smile. “It would be no laughing matter.”
“But what have I to do with it,” said Michael, reverting to the earlier part of their conversation. “What do you—or she—want me to do, or not to do?”
“Oh, that is quite easy to explain, sir,” replied the housekeeper, briskly. “It is not to do that we ask of you. Just to keep her secret, in short, for the two or three days that remain.”