This charge she levelled at Mrs Plummer, who was amazed.
"To me! Why, they're all complete strangers to me; I never saw one of them before, and haven't the faintest notion where they come from or who they are.
"All the same, I believe I am; to you or to Evans; probably to both."
"My dear, what do you mean? The things you say!"
"It's the things you say, that's what I mean. You and Evans have been talking to the people here; you have been telling them who I am, and a great many things you have no right to tell them. They've been telling people down in the valley, and the thing has spread; how the rich Arnott girl, who has so much money she herself doesn't know how much, is stopping up here all alone. I know. These creatures have come up in consequence. That man Blenkinsop as good as told me this afternoon that he only came because he heard that I was here."
"My dear, what can you expect? You can't hide your light under a bushel. You would have much more real solitude in a crowd than in a place like this."
"Should I? We shall see. If this sort of thing occurs again I shall send you and Evans home. I shall drop my own name, and take a pseudonym; and I shall go into lodgings, and live on fifty francs a week--then we'll see if I sha'n't be left alone."
When Mrs Plummer retailed these remarks to Evans, the lady's maid--who had already been the recipient of a few observations on her own account--expressed herself with considerable frankness on the subject of her mistress.
"I believe she's mad--I do really. I don't mean that she's bad enough for a lunatic asylum or anything like that; but that she has a screw loose, and that there's something wrong with her, I'm pretty nearly sure. Look at the fits of depression she has--with her quite young and everything to make her all the other way. Look how she broods. She might be like the party in the play who'd murdered sleep, the way she keeps awake of nights. I know she reads till goodness knows what time; and often and often I don't believe she has a wink of sleep all night It isn't natural--I know I shouldn't like it if it was me. She might have done some dreadful crime, and be haunted by it, the way that she goes on-- she might really."
It was, perhaps, owing to the fact that the unfortunate lady practically had no human society except the lady's maid's that Mrs Plummer did not rebuke her more sharply for indulging in such free and easy comments on the lady to whom they were both indebted. She did observe that Evans ought not to say such things; but, judging from certain passages in a letter which, later on, she sent to Mrs Stacey, it is possible that the woman's words had made a greater impression than she had cared to admit.