This Miss Susan said low, with her eyes bent on the fire, to herself rather than to Giovanna; from whom, indeed, she expected no response.
“Mon Dieu! it is not like that,” cried the young woman; “what is it that I do to you? Nothing! I do not trouble, nor tease, nor ask for anything. I am contented with what you give me. I have come here, and I find it well; but you, what is it that I do to you? I do not interfere. It is but to see me one time in a day, two times, perhaps. Listen, it cannot be so bad for you to see me even two times in a day as it would be for me to go back to my belle-mère.”
“But you have no right to be here,” said Miss Susan, shaking her gray dress free from the baby’s grasp, who had rolled softly off the young woman’s knee, and now sat on the carpet between them. His little babble went on all through their talk. The plaything Giovanna had given him—a paper-knife of carved ivory—was a delightful weapon to the child; he struck the floor with it, which under no possibility could be supposed capable of motion, and then the legs of the chair, on which Miss Susan sat, which afforded a more likely steed. Miss Susan had hard ado to pull her skirts from the soft round baby fingers, as the child looked up at her with great eyes, which laughed in her angry face. It was all she could do to keep her heart from melting to him; but then, that woman! who looked at her with eyes which were not angry, nor disagreeable, wooing her to smile—which not for the world, and all it contained, would she do.
“Always I have seen that one does what one can for one’s self,” said Giovanna; “shall I think of you first, instead of myself? But no! is there any in the world who does that? But, no! it is contrary to reason. I do my best for me; and then I reflect, now that I am well off, I will hurt no one. I will be friends if Madame Suzanne will. I wish not to trouble her. I will show de l’amitié for her as well as for le petit. Thus it should be when we live in one house.”
Giovanna spoke with a certain earnestness as of honest conviction. She had no sense of irony in her mind; but Miss Susan had a deep sense of irony, and felt herself insulted when she was thus addressed by the intruder who had found her way into her house, and made havoc of her life. She got up hastily to her feet, overturning the child, who had now seated himself on her dress, and for whom this hasty movement had all the effect of an earthquake. She did not even notice this, however, and paid no attention to his cries, but fell to walking about the room in a state of impatience and excitement which would not be kept under.
“You do well to teach me what people should do who live in one house!” cried Miss Susan. “It comes gracefully from you who have forced yourself into my house against my will—who are a burden, and insupportable to me—you and your child. Take him away, or you will drive me mad! I cannot hear myself speak.”
“Hush, mon ange,” said Giovanna; “hush, here is something else that is pretty for thee—hush! and do not make the bonne maman angry. Ah, pardon, Madame Suzanne, you are not the bonne maman—but you look almost like her when you look like that!”
“You are very impertinent,” said Miss Susan, blushing high; for to compare her to Madame Austin of Bruges was more than she could bear.
“That is still more like her!” said Giovanna; “the belle-mère often tells me I am impertinent. Can I help it then? if I say what I think, that cannot be wrong. But you are not really like the bonne maman, Madame Suzanne,” she added, subduing the malice in her eyes. “You hate me, but you do not try to make me unhappy. You give me everything I want. You do not grudge; you do not make me work. Ah, what a life she would have made to one who came like me!”
This silenced Miss Susan, in spite of herself; for she herself felt and knew that she was not at all kind to Giovanna, and she was quite unaware that Giovanna was inaccessible to those unkindnesses which more refined natures feel, and having the substantial advantages of her reception at Whiteladies undisturbed by any practical hardship, had no further requirements in a sentimental sort. Miss Susan felt that she was not kind, but Giovanna did not feel it; and as the elder woman could not understand the bluntness of feeling in the younger, which produced this toleration, she was obliged, against her will, to see in it some indication of a higher nature. She thought reluctantly, and for the moment, that the woman whom she loathed was better than herself. She came back to the chair as this thought forced itself upon her, and sat down there and fixed her eyes upon the intruder, who still held her place on the carpet at her feet.