"I must be very much tired, indeed, Catherine, when I do not like to hear you talk," was the kind reply.
Mrs. Danvers reposed very comfortably in her arm-chair, with her feet upon a footstool before the cheerful blazing fire; and now Catherine drew her chair closer, rested her feet upon the fender, and seemed to prepare herself for a regular confidential talk with her beloved old friend.
"My dear Mrs. Danvers, you are such a friend both of my dear mother's and mine, that I think I may, without scruple, open my whole heart to you upon a matter in which more than myself are concerned. If you think me wrong stop me," said she, laying her hand affectionately upon that of her friend, and fixing those honest, earnest eyes of hers upon her face.
Mrs. Danvers pressed the hand, and said:
"My love, whatever you confide to me you know is sacred; and if I can be of any assistance to you, dear girl, I think you need not scruple opening your mind; for you know I am a sort of general mother-confessor to all my acquaintance, and am as secret as such a profession demands."
Catherine lifted up the hand; she held it, pressed it, and continued to hold it; then she looked at the fire a little while, and at last spoke.
"Did you never in your walk in life observe one evil under the sun, which appears to me to be a most crying one in many families, the undue influence exercised by, and the power allowed to servants?"
"Yes, my dear, there are few of the minor evils—if minor it can be called—that I have thought productive of more daily discomforts than that. At times the evils assume a much greater magnitude, and are very serious indeed. Alienated hearts—divided families—property to a large amount unjustly and unrighteously diverted from its natural channel—and misery, not to be told, about old age and a dying bed."
Catherine slightly shuddered, and said:
"I have not had an opportunity of seeing much of the world, you know; what you say is rather what I feared it might be, than what I have actually observed; but I have had a sort of divination of what might in future arise. It is inexplicable to me the power a servant may gain, and the tyrannical way in which she will dare to exercise it. The unaccountable way in which those who have every title to command, may be brought to obey is scarcely to be believed, and to me inexplicable."