Willingly engaging to pay attention to Mrs. Frankland's request, Mr. Orridge left the bedside.
As he opened the room door, he stopped to tell Mrs. Jazeph that he should be down stairs if she wanted him, and that he would give her any instructions of which she might stand in need later in the evening, before he left the inn for the night. The new nurse, when he passed by her, was kneeling over one of Mrs. Frankland's open trunks, arranging some articles of clothing which had been rather carelessly folded up. Just before he spoke to her, he observed that she had a chemisette in her hand, the frill of which was laced through with ribbon.
One end of this ribbon she appeared to him to be on the point of drawing out, when the sound of his footsteps disturbed her. The moment she became aware of his approach she dropped the chemisette suddenly in the trunk, and covered it over with some handkerchiefs. Although this proceeding on Mrs. Jazeph's part rather surprised the doctor, he abstained from showing that he had noticed it. Her mistress had vouched for her character, after five years' experience of it, and the bit of ribbon was intrinsically worthless. On both accounts, it was impossible to suspect her of attempting to steal it; and yet, as Mr. Orridge could not help feeling when he had left the room, her conduct, when he surprised her over the trunk, was exactly the conduct of a person who is about to commit a theft.
"Pray don't trouble yourself about my luggage," said Rosamond, remarking Mrs. Jazeph's occupation as soon as the doctor had gone. "That is my idle maid's business, and you will only make her more careless than ever if you do it for her. I am sure the room is beautifully set in order. Come here and sit down and rest yourself. You must be a very unselfish, kind-hearted woman to give yourself all this trouble to serve a stranger. The doctor's message this afternoon told me that your mistress was a friend of my poor, dear father's. I suppose she must have known him before my time. Any way, I feel doubly grateful to her for taking an interest in me for my father's sake. But you can have no such feeling; you must have come here from pure good-nature and anxiety to help others. Don't go away, there, to the window. Come and sit down by me."
Mrs. Jazeph had risen from the trunk, and was approaching the bedside—when she suddenly turned away in the direction of the fire-place, just as Mrs. Frankland began to speak of her father.
"Come and sit here," reiterated Rosamond, getting impatient at receiving no answer. "What in the world are you doing there at the foot of the bed?"
The figure of the new nurse again interposed between the bed and the fading evening light that glimmered through the window before there was any reply.
"The evening is closing in," said Mrs. Jazeph, "and the window is not quite shut. I was thinking of making it fast, and of drawing down the blind—if you had no objection, ma'am?"
"Oh, not yet! not yet! Shut the window, if you please, in case the baby should catch cold, but don't draw down the blind. Let me get my peep at the view as long as there is any light left to see it by. That long flat stretch of grazing-ground out there is just beginning, at this dim time, to look a little like my childish recollections of a Cornish moor. Do you know any thing about Cornwall, Mrs. Jazeph?"
"I have heard—" At those first three words of reply the nurse stopped. She was just then engaged in shutting the window, and she seemed to find some difficulty in closing the lock.