“It is very kind of you, I am sure,” said Miss Susan, more and more troubled. “Do you know many people in England? We shall, of course, be very glad to have you for a little while, but Whiteladies is not—amusing—at this time of the year.”
“I know nobody—but you,” said the stranger again. She sat with her great eyes fixed upon Miss Susan, who faltered and trembled under their steady gaze, leaning back in her chair, stretching out her feet to the fire with the air of one entirely at home, and determined to be comfortable. She never took her eyes from Miss Susan’s face, and there was a slight smile on her lip.
“Listen,” she said. “It was not possible any longer there. They always hated me. Whatever I said or did, it was wrong. They could not put me out, for others would have cried shame. They quarreled with me and scolded me, sometimes ten times in a day. Ah, yes. I was not a log of wood. I scolded, too; and we all hated each other. But they love the child. So I thought to come away, and bring the child to you. It is you that have done it, and you should have it; and it is I, madame knows, that have the only right to dispose of it. It is I—you acknowledge that?”
Heaven and earth! was it possible that the woman meant anything like what she said? “You have had a quarrel with them,” said Miss Susan, pretending to take it lightly, falling at every word into a tremor she could not restrain. “Ah! that happens sometimes, but fortunately it does not last. If I can be of any use to make it up, I will do anything I can.”
As she spoke she tried to return, and to overcome, if possible, the steady gaze of the other; but this was not an effort of which Miss Susan was capable. The strange, beautiful creature, who looked like some being of a new species treading this unaccustomed soil, looked calmly at her and smiled again.
“No,” she said, “you will keep me here; that will be change, what I lofe. I will know your friends. I will be as your daughter. You will not send me back to that place where they hate me. I like this better. I will stay here, and be a daughter to you.”
Miss Susan grew pale to her very lips; her sin had found her out. “You say so because you are angry,” she said, trembling; “but they are your friends; they have been kind to you. This is not really my house, but my nephew’s, and I cannot pretend to have—any right to you; though what you say is very kind,” she added, with a shiver. “I will write to M. Austin, and you will pay us a short visit, for we are dull here—and then you will go back to your home. I know you would not like the life here.”
“I shall try,” said the stranger composedly. “I like a room like this, and a warm, beautiful house; and you have many servants and are rich. Ah, madame must not be too modest. She has a right to me—and the child. She will be my second mother, I know it. I shall be very happy here.”
Miss Susan trembled more and more. “Indeed you are deceiving yourself,” she said. “Indeed, I could not set myself against Mousheer Austin, your father-in-law. Indeed, indeed—”
“And indeed, indeed!” said her visitor. “Yes; you have best right to the child. The child is yours—and I cannot be separated from him. Am not I his mother?” she said, with a mocking light on her face, and laughed—a laugh which was in reality very musical and pleasant, but which sounded to Miss Susan like the laugh of a fiend.