‘It is not Julie’s fault: it is I, Cecile, come to welcome you home.’
Mrs. Swinford rose up from the couch upon which she had been reclining, with a cry. She made a step forward, and allowed herself to drop into the arms which the visitor held forth. It was a strange embrace, apparently altogether on one side; the other passive, receiving only the marks of affection. Yet there was something in the abandon with which the great lady let herself go into the stranger’s arms, which showed almost a greater warmth in the receiver than giver of the embrace. She put down her head on Mrs. Brown’s shoulder with a murmur of welcome and satisfaction; then raised it to wave an angry hand towards Julie, bidding her go. The maid retired without a word. She was a middle-aged Frenchwoman, very neat, and rather grim, black-haired, and dark-complexioned, with a black gown, and hair elaborately dressed. She obeyed her mistress in utter silence, closing the door noiselessly behind her, but threw her head and body, like a pendulum, to and fro as she went back to the work which she had been doing under the west window by the waning light. Evidently this stranger was no welcome apparition to Julie, any more than to more important persons in the house.
‘What wind has blown you here? and where do you come from, just when I felt such enormous need of you?’ Mrs. Swinford said.
‘Some people would say it was an ill wind; and you know I feel always when you want me,’ said Mrs. Brown.
‘You must have known that when I came here, where there are so many horrible associations, I must have wanted you. It is an instinct. Listen, Artémise. Leo has forced me here against my will. He has all his father’s foolish notions, with more added of his own. And he has the upper hand, which his father never had——’
‘Sometimes, my dear.’
‘Once, you mean,’ said Mrs. Swinford. She was old, though she kept that fact at bay, and did not admit it by any outward sign: but she flushed over all her face like a girl at these words. ‘Once, no more: and you know how that is brought back to me here, and every incident of the time. That woman at my very door, bearing the name—— which she never would have had but for me.’
‘I never liked the expedient, Cecile.’
‘Why, it was you who—— and it was the only way. But now that the whole dreadful tale is swept away into the past, and everybody, except you and me, has forgotten it, there she sits at my door, calm, with that name. And I have to receive her; to call her friend; to kiss her—— imagine! I have kissed Emily Plowden, and called her by that name!’
‘I don’t see what else you could do. It was your own doing, the whole affair. I will always stand by you, through thick and thin. But I never approved of that, Cecile. It was too heavy a responsibility. If you like to do certain things you know you will have to pay for them. You get nothing for nothing in this world. But I don’t like meddling with another creature’s life.’