The sound of that sigh fell very sadly on Rosamond's heart. Up to this time the baby's little span of life had always been associated with smiling faces and pleasant words. It made her uneasy to think that any one could caress him and sigh after it.
"I am sure you must be fond of children," she said, hesitating a little from natural delicacy of feeling. "But will you excuse me for noticing that it seems rather a mournful fondness? Pray—pray don't answer my question if it gives you any pain—if you have any loss to deplore; but—but I do so want to ask if you have ever had a child of your own?"
Mrs. Jazeph was standing near a chair when that question was put. She caught fast hold of the back of it, grasping it so firmly, or perhaps leaning on it so heavily, that the woodwork cracked. Her head dropped low on her bosom. She did not utter, or even attempt to utter, a single word.
Fearing that she must have lost a child of her own, and dreading to distress her unnecessarily by venturing to ask any more questions, Rosamond said nothing, as she stooped over the baby to kiss him in her turn. Her lips rested on his cheek a little above where Mrs. Jazeph's lips had rested the moment before, and they touched a spot of wet on his smooth warm skin. Fearing that some of the water in which she had been bathing her face might have dropped on him, she passed her fingers lightly over his head, neck, and bosom, and felt no other spots of wet any where. The one drop that had fallen on him was the drop that wetted the cheek which the new nurse had kissed.
The twilight faded over the landscape, the room grew darker and darker; and still, though she was now sitting close to the table on which the candles and matches were placed, Mrs. Jazeph made no attempt to strike a light. Rosamond did not feel quite comfortable at the idea of lying awake in the darkness, with nobody in the room but a person who was as yet almost a total stranger; and she resolved to have the candles lighted immediately.
"Mrs. Jazeph," she said, looking toward the gathering obscurity outside the window, "I shall be much obliged to you, if you will light the candles and pull down the blind. I can trace no more resemblances out there, now, to a Cornish prospect; the view has gone altogether."
"Are you very fond of Cornwall, ma'am?" asked Mrs. Jazeph, rising, in rather a dilatory manner, to light the candles.
"Indeed I am," said Rosamond. "I was born there; and my husband and I were on our way to Cornwall when we were obliged to stop, on my account, at this place. You are a long time getting the candles lit. Can't you find the match-box?"
Mrs. Jazeph, with an awkwardness which was rather surprising in a person who had shown so much neat-handedness in setting the room to rights, broke the first match in attempting to light it, and let the second go out the instant after the flame was kindled. At the third attempt she was more successful; but she only lit one candle, and that one she carried away from the table which Mrs. Frankland could see, to the dressing-table, which was hidden from her by the curtains at the foot of the bed.
"Why do you move the candle?" asked Rosamond.