“You have no complaint to make of the servants?”
“The servants are always kind to me.”
“I needn’t detain you any longer—I have a person coming to speak to me.”
Carmina had entered the room in doubt and fear. She left it with strangely-mingled feelings of perplexity and relief. Her sense of a mysterious change in her aunt had strengthened with every word that Mrs. Gallilee had said to her. She had heard of reformatory institutions, and of discreet persons called matrons who managed them. In her imaginary picture of such places, Mrs. Gallilee’s tone and manner realised, in the strangest way, her idea of a matron speaking to a penitent.
As she crossed the hall, her thoughts took a new direction. Some indefinable distrust of the coming time got possession of her. An ugly model of the Colosseum, in cork, stood on the hall table. She looked at it absently. “I hope Teresa will come soon,” she thought—and turned away to the stairs.
She ascended slowly; her head drooping, her mind still preoccupied. Arrived at the first landing, a sound of footsteps disturbed her. She looked up—and found herself face to face with Mr. Le Frank, leaving the schoolroom after his music lesson. At that sudden discovery, a cry of alarm escaped her—the common little scream of a startled woman. Mr. Le Frank made an elaborately formal bow: he apologised with sternly stupid emphasis. “I beg your pardon.”
Moved by a natural impulse, penitently conscious of those few foolish words of hers which he had so unfortunately overheard, the poor girl made an effort to conciliate him. “I have very few friends, Mr. Le Frank,” she said timidly. “May I still consider you as one of them? Will you forgive and forget? Will you shake hands?”
Mr. Le Frank made another magnificent bow. He was proud of his voice. In his most resonant and mellifluous tones, he said, “You do me honour—” and took the offered hand, and lifted it grandly, and touched it with his lips.
She held by the baluster with her free hand, and controlled the sickening sensation which that momentary contact with him produced. He might have detected the outward signs of the struggle, but for an interruption which preserved her from discovery. Mrs. Gallilee was standing at the open library door. Mrs. Gallilee said, “I am waiting for you, Mr. Le Frank.”
Carmina hurried up the stairs, pursued already by a sense of her own imprudence. In her first confusion and dismay, but one clear idea presented itself. “Oh!” she said, “have I made another mistake?”