“Miss Stella?” The maid stared. To be in the Channel House and not know who Miss Stella was! “Miss Stella?” she repeated blankly. “Why, Miss Stella, of course.”
The days passed quickly, and in the pure, strong air and under the generous treatment Unity began to mend. She also began to form a dim conception of Miss Stella. It was gradually borne in upon her mind that not only the household, but the whole cosmic scheme, revolved round Miss Stella. Sometimes they called her by another name, Stellamaris, which sounded queer, like the names of princesses in the fairy-tales they had given her to read. Perhaps this Miss Stella was a fairy-princess. Why not? Thus it came to pass that even in the darkened mind of this child of wretchedness Stellamaris began to shine with a lambent glow of mystery.
Now and then the kind gentleman came to visit her, with gifts of chocolates (as became her new estate), which she accepted meekly, though in her heart she regretted the peppermint bull's-eyes of fuller and more satisfying flavour. She learned in course of time that he was the husband of the woman whose image still brought sweating fright into her dreams. To save her from waking terror, Lady Blount spent much time and tact, enlisting her sympathy for John by convincing her that he himself had received barbarous usage from the same abhorred hands. Unity, whose habit of mind was to translate conceptions into terms of the objective, wondered what form of physical torture was applied to John. She pitied him immensely, but consoled herself by the reflection that as he was very big and strong, his probable sufferings were not inordinate. That so big and strong a man, however, should have suffered unresistingly she could not understand.
“Why did n't he wipe her over the 'ed, m' lady?” she asked simply. The “m' lady” was the result of the maid's instructions.
Lady Blount administered the necessary linguistic corrections, and, proceeding to the sociological side, informed her that gentlemen never struck women, no matter how great the provocation. Unity was quick to apply the proposition personally.
“Then Mr. Risca will never beat me, even if I do wrong?”
“Good Heavens! no, child,” cried Lady Blount, horrified. “Mr. Risca is as gentle as a kitten. You should see him with Miss Stella.”
“Miss Stella loves him very much, m' lady?”
“Of course she does.”
“And he loves her, too?”