e more sugar in my tea?"
Mrs. Gallilee turned to Carmina.
"Well, my dear? I have spoken to you, as I might have spoken to one of my own daughters, if she had been of your age. Tell me frankly, in return, whether I may count on your help."
Still pale and downcast, Carmina obeyed. "I will do my best, if you wish it. But--"
"Yes? Go on."
She still hesitated. Mrs. Gallilee tried gentle remonstrance. "My child, surely you are not afraid of me?"
She was certainly afraid. But she controlled herself.
"You are Ovid's mother, and I am only his cousin," she resumed. "I don't like to hear you say that my influence over him is greater than yours."
It was far from the poor girl's intention; but there was an implied rebuke in this. In her present state of irritation, Mrs. Gallilee felt it.
"Come! come!" she said. "Don't affect to be ignorant, my dear, of what you know perfectly well."
Carmina lifted her head. For the first time in the experience of the two elder women, this gentle creature showed that she could resent an insult. The fine spirit that was in her fired her eyes, and fixed them firmly on her aunt.
"Do you accuse me of deceit?" she asked.
"Let us call it false modesty," Mrs. Gallilee retorted.
Carmina rose without another word--and walked out of the room.
In the extremity of her surprise, Mrs. Gallilee appealed to Miss Minerva. "Is she in a passion?"
"She didn't bang the door," the governess quietly remarked.
"I am not joking, Miss Minerva."
"I am not joking either, madam."
The tone of that answer implied an uncompromising assertion of equality. You are not to suppose (it said) that a lady drops below your level, because she receives a salary and teaches your children. Mrs. Gallilee was so angry, by this time, that she forgot the importance of preventing a conference between Miss Minerva and her niece. For once, she was the creature of impulse--the overpowering impulse to dismiss her insolent governess from her hospitable table.
"May I offer you another cup of tea?"
"Thank you--no more. May I return to my pupils?"
"By all means!"
Carmina had not been five minutes in her own room before she heard a knock at the door. Had Mrs. Gallilee followed her? "Who is there?" she asked. And a voice outside answered,
"Only Miss Minerva!"
CHAPTER XVI.
"I am afraid I have startled you?" said the governess, carefully closing the door.
"I thought it was my aunt," Carmina answered, as simply as a child.
"Have you been crying?"
"I couldn't help it, Miss Minerva."
"Mrs. Gallilee spoke cruelly to you--I don't wonder at your feeling angry."
Carmina gently shook her head. "I have been crying," she explained, "because I am sorry and ashamed. How can I make it up with my aunt? Shall I go back at once and beg her pardon? I think you are my friend, Miss Minerva. Will you advise me?"
It was so prettily and innocently said that even the governess was touched--for a moment. "Shall I prove to you that I am your friend?" she proposed. "I advise you not to go back yet to your aunt--and I will tell you why. Mrs. Gallilee bears malice; she is a thoroughly unforgiving woman. And I should be the first to feel it, if she knew what I have just said to you."
"Oh, Miss Minerva! you don't think that I would betray your confidence?"
"No, my dear, I don't. I felt attracted towards you, when we first met. You didn't return the feeling--you (very naturally) disliked me. I am ugly and ill-tempered: and, if there is anything good in me, it doesn't show itself on the surface. Yes! yes! I believe you are beginning to understand me. If I can make your life here a little happier, as time goes on, I shall be only too glad to do it." She put her long yellow hands on either side of Carmina's head, and kissed her forehead.
The poor child threw her arms round Miss Minerva's neck, and cried her heart out on the bosom of the woman who was deceiving her. "I have nobody left, now Teresa has gone," she said. "Oh, do try to be kind to me--I feel so friendless and so lonely!"
Miss Minerva neither moved nor spoke. She waited, and let the girl cry.
Her heavy black eyebrows gathered into a frown; her sallow face deepened in colour. She was in a state of rebellion against herself. Through all the hardening influences of the woman's life--through the fortifications against good which watchful evil builds in human hearts--that innocent outburst of trust and grief had broken its way; and had purified for a while the fetid inner darkness with divine light. She had entered the room, with her own base interests to serve. In her small sordid way she, like her employer, was persecuted by debts--miserable debts to sellers of expensive washes, which might render her ugly complexion more passable in Ovid's eyes; to makers of costly gloves, which might show Ovid the shape of her hands, and hide their colour; to skilled workmen in fine leather, who could tempt Ovid to look at her high instep, and her fine ankle--the only beauties that she could reveal to the only man whom she cared to please. For the time, those importunate creditors ceased to threaten her. For the time, what she had heard in the conservatory, while they were reading the Will, lost its tempting influence. She remained in the room for half an hour more--and she left it without having borrowed a farthing.
"Are you easier now?"
"Yes, dear."
Carmina dried her eyes, and looked shyly at Miss Minerva. "I have been treating you as if I had a sister," she said; "you don't think me too familiar, I hope?"
"I wish I was your sister, God knows!"
The words were hardly out of her mouth before she was startled by her own fervour. "Shall I tell you what to do with Mrs. Gallilee?" she said abruptly. "Write her a little note."
"Yes! yes! and you will take it for me?"
Carmina's eyes brightened through her tears, the suggestion was such a relief! In a minute the note was written: "My dear Aunt, I have behaved very badly, and I am very much ashamed of it. May I trust to your kind indulgence to forgive me? I will try to be worthier of your kindness for the future; and I sincerely beg your pardon." She signed her name in breathless haste. "Please take it at once!" she said eagerly.
Miss Minerva smiled. "If I take it," she said, "I shall do harm instead of good--I shall be accused of interfering. Give it to one of the servants. Not yet! When Mrs. Gallilee is angry, she doesn't get over it so soon as you seem to think. Leave her to dabble in science first," said the governess in tones of immeasurable contempt. "When she has half stifled herself with some filthy smell, or dissected some wretched insect or flower, she may be in a better humour. Wait."
Carmina thought of the happy days at home in Italy, when her father used to laugh at her little outbreaks of temper, and good Teresa only shrugged her shoulders. What a change--oh, me, what a change for the worse! She drew from her bosom a locket, hung round her neck by a thin gold chain--and opened it, and kissed the glass over the miniature portraits inside.