“Too young to feel my misfortune—but old enough to remember the sweetest woman that ever lived. Let me show you my father’s portrait of her again. Doesn’t that face tell you what an angel she was? There was some charm in her that all children felt. I can just remember some of my playfellows who used to come to our garden. Other good mothers were with us—but the children all crowded round my mother. They would have her in all their games; they fought for places on her lap when she told them stories; some of them cried, and some of them screamed, when it was time to take them away from her. Oh, why do we live! why do we die! I have bitter thoughts sometimes, Frances, like you. I have read in poetry that death is a fearful thing. To me, death is a cruel thing,—and it has never seemed so cruel as in these later days, since I have known Ovid. If my mother had but lived till now, what happiness would have been added to my life and to hers! How Ovid would have loved her—how she would have loved Ovid!”
Miss Minerva listened in silence. It was the silence of true interest and sympathy, while Carmina was speaking of her mother. When her lover’s name became mingled with the remembrances of her childhood—the change came. Once more, the tell-tale lines began to harden in the governess’s face. She lay back again in her chair. Her fingers irritably platted and unplatted the edge of her black apron.
Carmina was too deeply absorbed in her thoughts, too eagerly bent on giving them expression, to notice these warning signs.
“I have all my mother’s letters to my father,” she went on, “when he was away from her on his sketching excursions, You have still a little time to spare—I should so like to read some of them to you. I was reading one, last night—which perhaps accounts for my dream? It is on a subject that interests everybody. In my father’s absence, a very dear friend of his met with a misfortune; and my mother had to prepare his wife to hear the bad news—oh, that reminds me! There is something I want to say to you first.”
“About yourself?” Miss Minerva asked.
“About Ovid. I want your advice.”
Miss Minerva was silent. Carmina went on. “It’s about writing to Ovid,” she explained.
“Write, of course!”
The reply was suddenly and sharply given. “Surely, I have not offended you?” Carmina said.
“Nonsense! Let me hear your mother’s letter.”