I stood in the doorway, and watched this delicious creature for a minute while she amused herself—and me also, although she knew it not. “Say No!” she cried out to the great china nobleman; quite a foot high he was. But, despite her pretence at altering his unvaried affirmative, it still went on. My lady walked all around him, and presently said aloud: “No! no! It must be No! Say No!” stamping a foot, as if angry, and then of a sudden running up to the mandarin and laughing. “He has a crack in his head. That is why he says Yes! Yes! I must be a female mandarin, and that is why I say No! No! I wonder does he talk broken China?”
At this moment she saw my tall black figure in a corner mirror, and made some exclamation, as if startled; an instant later she knew it was I, but as if by magic the laughing woman was no longer there. What I saw as she came toward me was a slight, quiet nun with eyes full of tears.
I was used to her swift changes of mood, but what her words, or some of them, meant I knew not; and as for this pitying face, with its sudden sadness, what more did it mean? Major Andre said of her later that Mistress Darthea was like a lake in the hills, reflecting all things, and yet herself after all. But how many such tricksy ways, pretty or vexing, she was to show some of us in the years to come did not yet appear.
In a moment I seemed to see before me the small dark child I first knew at school. Why was she now so curiously perturbed? “Mr. Wynne,” she said, “you never come near me now—oh, not for a month! And to-day your aunt has shown me a part of the dear mother’s letter, and—and—I am so sorry for you! I am indeed! I have long wanted to say so. I wish I could help you. I do not think you forget easily, and—and—you were so good to me when I was an ugly little brat. I think your mother loved me. That is a thing to make one think better of one’s self. I need it, sir. It is a pretty sort of vanity, and how vain you must be, who had so much of her love!”
“I thank thee,” I said simply. Indeed, for a time I was so moved that say more I could not. “I thank thee, Miss Peniston. There is no one on earth whom I would rather hear say what thou hast said.”
I saw her colour a little, and she replied quickly, “I am only a child, and I say what comes to my lips; I might better it often if I stayed to think.”
“No!” I cried. Whenever she got into trouble—and she was ready to note the tenderness in my voice—this pretty pretext of the irresponsibility of childhood would serve her turn. “No,” said I; “I like dearly to hear my mother praised,—who could praise her too much?—but when it is thou who sayest of her such true things, how shall I tell thee what it is to me who love to hear thee talk—even nonsense?”
“I talk nonsense? Do I?”
“Yes, sometimes. I—want thee to listen to me. I have cared for thee—”
“Now please don’t, Mr. Wynne. They all do it, and—I like you. I want to keep some friends.”