“I heard Miss Minerva tell my master, while I was helping the young ladies to get ready.”
“Very well. Ask Miss Minerva to come here, and speak to me.”
Miss Minerva sat at the open window of her bedroom, looking out vacantly at the backs of houses, in the street behind Fairfield Gardens.
The evil spirit was the dominant spirit in her again. She, too, was thinking of Ovid and Carmina. Her memory was busy with the parting scene on the previous day.
The more she thought of all that had happened in that short space of time, the more bitterly she reproached herself. Her one besetting weakness had openly degraded her, without so much as an attempt at resistance on her part. The fear of betraying herself if she took leave of the man she secretly loved, in the presence of his family, had forced her to ask a favour of Carmina, and to ask it under circumstances which might have led her rival to suspect the truth. Admitted to a private interview with Ovid, she had failed to control her agitation; and, worse still, in her ungovernable eagerness to produce a favourable impression on him at parting, she had promised—honestly promised, in that moment of impulse—to make Carmina’s happiness her own peculiar care! Carmina, who had destroyed in a day the hope of years! Carmina, who had taken him away from her; who had clung round him when he ran upstairs, and had kissed him—fervently, shamelessly kissed him—before the servants in the hall!
She started to her feet, roused to a frenzy of rage by her own recollections. Standing at the window, she looked down at the pavement of the courtyard—it was far enough below to kill her instantly if she fell on it. Through the heat of her anger there crept the chill and stealthy prompting of despair. She leaned over the window-sill—she was not afraid—she might have done it, but for a trifling interruption. Somebody spoke outside.
It was the parlour-maid. Instead of entering the room, she spoke through the open door. The woman was one of Miss Minerva’s many enemies in the house. “Mrs. Gallilee wishes to see you,” she said—and shut the door again, the instant the words were out of her mouth.
Mrs. Gallilee!
The very name was full of promise at that moment. It suggested hope—merciless hope.
She left the window, and consulted her looking-glass. Even to herself, her haggard face was terrible to see. She poured eau-de-cologne and water into her basin, and bathed her burning head and eyes. Her shaggy black hair stood in need of attention next. She took almost as much pains with it as if she had been going into the presence of Ovid himself. “I must make a calm appearance,” she thought, still as far as ever from suspecting that her employer had guessed her secret, “or his mother may find me out.” Her knees trembled under her. She sat down for a minute to rest.