The girl made no effort to shake her off, and not the least response to her caress. With perfect dignity she went quietly up-stairs. With perfect dignity she let the governess and the housemaid do to her whatever they liked. They bathed Molly, rubbed her with lotions, poulticed her with mustard, gave her a hot drink, and all the time Miss Carew's heart ached at the impossibility of helping her in the very least.
"Can I leave the door open between our rooms, in case you want anything in the night?" she faltered.
"Oh, yes; certainly."
"May I kiss you?"
"Yes, of course."
CHAPTER VI
MOLLY COMES OF AGE
For some time after that terrible night Molly never spoke to Mrs. Carteret unless it were absolutely necessary. It may be difficult to believe that no explanation was sought or given and after a time things seemed to be much as before. The silence of a brooding nature is a terrible thing; and it is more common in narrow, dull lives than in any other. Uneducated men and women in villages, or servants cramped together in one house, I have known to brood over some injury in an awful silence for twenty or thirty years. If Molly's future life had been in Mrs. Carteret's hands, the sense of wrong would have burrowed deeper and been even better hidden, but Molly, aided by Miss Carew, had convinced herself that liberty would come, without any fight for it, at twenty-one; so her view of the present was that it was a tiresome but inevitable waiting for real life.