No wise man expects to be mercifully treated, when he is shut into a carriage with a mature single lady, inflamed by curiosity. I was not unprepared for Miss Jillgall when she alluded, for the second time, to the sad events which had happened in the house on the previous day—and especially to the destruction by Mr. Gracedieu of the portrait of his wife.
“Why didn’t he destroy something else?” she pleaded, piteously. “It is such a disappointment to Me. I never liked that picture myself. Of course I ought to have admired the portrait of the wife of my benefactor. But no—that disagreeable painted face was too much for me. I should have felt inexpressibly relieved, if I could have shown it to Elizabeth, and heard her say that she agreed with me.”
“Perhaps I saw it when I called on you,” Mrs. Tenbruggen suggested. “Where did the picture hang?”
“My dear! I received you in the dining-room, and the portrait hung in Mr. Gracedieu’s study.”
What they said to each other next escaped my attention. Quite unconsciously, Miss Jillgall had revealed to me a danger which neither the Minister nor I had discovered, though it had conspicuously threatened us both on the wall of the study. The act of mad destruction which, if I had possessed the means of safely interfering, I should certainly have endeavored to prevent, now assumed a new and startling aspect. If Mrs. Tenbruggen really had some motive of her own for endeavoring to identify the adopted child, the preservation of the picture must have led her straight to the end in view. The most casual opportunity of comparing Helena with the portrait of Mrs. Gracedieu would have revealed the likeness between mother and daughter—and, that result attained, the identification of Eunice with the infant whom the “Miss Chance” of those days had brought to the prison must inevitably have followed. It was perhaps natural that Mr. Gracedieu’s infatuated devotion to the memory of his wife should have blinded him to the betrayal of Helena’s parentage, which met his eyes every time he entered his study. But that I should have been too stupid to discover what he had failed to see, was a wound dealt to my self-esteem which I was vain enough to feel acutely.
Mrs. Tenbruggen’s voice, cheery and humorous, broke in on my reflections, with an odd question:
“Mr. Governor, do you ever condescend to read novels?”
“It’s not easy to say, Mrs. Tenbruggen, how grateful I am to the writers of novels.”
“Ah! I read novels, too. But I blush to confess—do I blush?—that I never thought of feeling grateful till you mentioned it. Selina and I don’t complain of your preferring your own reflections to our company. On the contrary, you have reminded us agreeably of the heroes of fiction, when the author describes them as being ‘absorbed in thought.’ For some minutes, Mr. Governor, you have been a hero; absorbed, as I venture to guess, in unpleasant remembrances of the time when I was a single lady. You have not forgotten how badly I behaved, and what shocking things I said, in those bygone days. Am I right?”
“You are entirely wrong.”