“You promised to have—oh, such an impossible piece, done to-day!” said Desirée, “and look, you naughty Joanna!—look here.”
She shook out a delicate piece of embroidery as she spoke, with a merry laugh. It was a highly-instructive bit of work, done in a regular succession of the most delicate perfection and the utmost bungling, to wit, Desirée’s own performance and the performance of her pupil. As the little governess clapped her hands over it, Joanna drew near and put her arms round the waist of her young teacher, overtopping her by all her own red head and half her big shoulders.
“I’ll never do it like you, Desirée,” said the girl, half in real affection, half with the benevolent purpose of aggravating her sister. “I’ll never do any thing so well as you, if I live to be as old as Aunt Jean.”
“Ah, then, you will need no governess,” said Desirée, “and if you did it as well as I, now, you should not want me, Joanna. I shall leave it for you there—and now it is time to come for one little half hour to the music. Will mademoiselle do us the honor to come and listen? It shall be only one little half hour.”
“No, thank you! I don’t care to hear girls at their lessons—and Joanna’s time is always so bad,” said the fretful Patricia. “Oh, I can’t help having an ear! I can hear only too well, thank you, where I am.”
Desirée made a very slight smiling curtsey to her opponent, and pressed Joanna’s arm lightly with her fingers to keep down the retort which trembled on that young lady’s lips. Then they went away together to the little supplementary musical lesson. Melmar had never turned round, nor taken the slightest notice, but he observed, notwithstanding, not only all that was done, but all that was looked and said, and it struck him, perhaps for the first time, that the English of Desirée was perfectly familiar and harmonious English, and that she never either paused for a word nor translated the idiom of one tongue into the speech of another. Uneasy suspicions began to play about his mind: he could scarcely say what he feared, yet he feared something. The little governess was French undeniably and emphatically—and yet she was not French, either, yet bore an unexplainable something of familiarity and home-likeness which had won for her the heart of Aunt Jean, and had startled himself unawares from her first introduction to Melmar. He stood at the window, looking out upon the blank, winterly landscape, the leafless trees in the distance, the damp grass and evergreens near the door, as the cheerful notes of Joanna’s music came stealing through the cold passages. The music was not in bad time, and it was in good taste, for Joanna was ambitious, and Desirée, though not an extraordinary musician herself, kept her pupil to this study with the most tenacious perseverance. As Melmar listened, vague thoughts, almost of fear, stole over him. He had been a lawyer, and a lawyer of a low class, smart in schemes and trickeries. He was ready to suspect everybody of cunning and the mean cleverness of deceit. Perhaps this was a little spy whom he fostered in his house. Perhaps her presence in the Edinburgh school was a trick to attract Joanna, and her presence here a successful plot to undermine and find out himself. His face grew redder still as he “put things together;” and by the time the music ceased, Melmar had concocted and found out (it is so easy to find out what one has concocted one’s own self,) a very pretty little conspiracy. He had found it out, he was persuaded, and it should go no further—trust him for that!
Accordingly, when his daughter and her governess returned, Melmar paid them a compliment upon their music, and was disposed to be friendly, as it appeared. Finally, after he had exhausted such subjects of chat as occurred to him, he got up, looking at Desirée, who was now busy with her embroidery.
“I rather think, mademoiselle, you have been more than three months here,” said Melmar, “and I have been inconsiderate and ungallant enough to forget the time. I’ll speak with you about that in my study, if you’ll favor me by coming there. I never speak of business but in my own room—eh, Joan? You got your thrashings there when you were young enough. Where does mademoiselle give you them now?”
“Don’t be foolish, papa,” said Joanna, jerking her head aside as he pinched her ear. “What do you want of Desirée? if it’s for Patricia, and you’re going to teaze her, I’ll not let her go, whatever you say.”
“And it is not quite three months, yet,” said Desirée, looking up with a smile. “Monsieur is too kind, but it still wants a week of the time.”