"This is my old nurse," said Lucilla, presenting her attendant to me. "Zillah can do a little of everything--cooking included. She has had lessons at a London Club. You must like Zillah, Madame Pratolungo, for my sake. Are your boxes open?"
She went down on her knees before the boxes, as she asked the question. No girl with the full use of her eyes could have enjoyed more thoroughly than she did the trivial amusement of unpacking my clothes. This time, however, her wonderful delicacy of touch proved to be at fault. Of two dresses of mine which happened to be exactly the same in texture, though widely different in color, she picked out the dark dress as being the light one. I saw that I disappointed her sadly when I told her of her mistake. The next guess she made, however, restored the tips of her fingers to their place in her estimation: she discovered the stripes in a smart pair of stockings of mine, and brightened up directly. "Don't be long dressing," she said, on leaving me. "We shall have dinner in half an hour. French dishes, in honor of your arrival. I like a nice dinner--I am what you call in your country, gourmande. See the sad consequence!" She put one finger to her pretty chin. "I am getting fat! I am threatened with a double chin--at two and twenty. Shocking! shocking!"
So she left me. And such was the first impression produced on my mind by "Poor Miss Finch."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
Twilight View of the Man
OUR nice dinner had long since come to an end. We had chattered, chattered, chattered--as usual with women--all about ourselves. The day had declined; the setting sun was pouring its last red luster into our pretty sitting-room--when Lucilla started as if she had suddenly remembered something, and rang the bell.
Zillah came in. "The bottle from the chemist's," said Lucilla. "I ought to have remembered it hours ago."
"Are you going to take it to Susan yourself, my dear?"
I was glad to hear the old nurse address her young lady in that familiar way. It was so thoroughly un-English. Down with the devilish system of separation between the classes in this country--that is what I say!
"Yes; I am going to take it to Susan myself."
"Shall I go with you?"
"No, no. Not the least occasion." She turned to me. "I suppose you are too tired to go out again, after your walk on the hills?" she said.
I had dined; I had rested; I was quite ready to go out again, and I said so.
Lucilla's face brightened. For some reason of her own, she had apparently attached a certain importance to persuading me to go out with her.
"It's only a visit to a poor rheumatic woman in the village," she said. "I have got an embrocation for her; and I can't very well send it. She is old and obstinate. If I take it to her, she will believe in the remedy. If anybody else takes it, she will throw it away. I had utterly forgotten her, in the interest of our nice long talk. Shall we get ready?"
I had hardly closed the door of my bedroom when there was a knock at it. Lucilla? No; the old nurse entering on tiptoe, with a face of mystery, and a finger confidentially placed on her lips.
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," she began in a whisper. "I think you ought to know that my young lady has a purpose in taking you out with her this evening. She is burning with curiosity--like all the rest of us for that matter. She took me out, and used my eyes to see with, yesterday evening; and they have not satisfied her. She is going to try your eyes, now."
"What is Miss Lucilla so curious about?" I inquired.
"It's natural enough, poor dear," pursued the old woman, following her own train of thought, without the slightest reference to my question. "We none of us can find out anything about him. He usually takes his walk at twilight. You are pretty sure to meet him to-night; and you will judge for yourself, ma'am--with an innocent young creature like Miss Lucilla--what it may be best to do?"
This extraordinary answer set my curiosity in a flame.
"My good creature!" I said, "you forget that I am a stranger! I know nothing about it. Has this mysterious man got a name? Who is 'He'?"
As I said that, there was another knock at the door. Zillah whispered, eagerly, "Don't tell upon me, ma'am! You will see for yourself. I only speak for my young lady's good." She hobbled away, and opened the door--and there was Lucilla, with her smart garden hat on, waiting for me.
We went out by our own door into the garden, and passing through a gate in the wall, entered the village.
After the caution which the nurse had given me, it was impossible to ask any questions, except at the risk of making mischief in our little household, on the first day of my joining it. I kept my eyes wide open, and waited for events. I also committed a blunder at starting--I offered Lucilla my hand to lead her. She burst out laughing.
"My dear Madame Pratolungo! I know my way better than you do. I roam all over the neighborhood, with nothing to help me but this."
She held up a smart ivory walking-cane, with a bright silk tassel attached. With her cane in one hand, and her chemical bottle in the other--and her roguish little hat on the top of her head--she made the quaintest and prettiest picture I had seen for many a long day. "You shall guide me, my dear," I said--and took her arm. We went on down the village.
Nothing in the least like a mysterious figure passed us in the twilight. The few scattered laboring people, whom I had already seen, I saw again--and that was all. Lucilla was silent--suspiciously silent as I thought, after what Zillah had told me. She had, as I fancied, the look of a person who was listening intently. Arrived at the cottage of the rheumatic woman, she stopped and went in, while I waited outside. The affair of the embrocation was soon over. She was out again in a minute--and this time, she took my arm of her own accord.
"Shall we go a little farther?" she said. "It is so nice and cool at this hour of the evening."
Her object in view, whatever it might be, was evidently an object that lay beyond the village. In the solemn, peaceful twilight we followed the lonely windings of the valley along which I had passed in the morning. When we came opposite the little solitary house, which I had already learnt to know as "Browndown," I felt her hand unconsciously tighten on my arm. "Aha!" I said to myself. "Has Browndown anything to do with this?"
"Does the view look very lonely to-night?" she asked, waving her cane over the scene before us.
The true meaning of that question I took to be, "Do you see anybody walking out to-night?" It was not my business to interpret her meaning, before she had thought fit to confide her secret to me. "To my mind, my dear," was all I said, "it is a very beautiful view."
She fell silent again, and absorbed herself in her own thoughts. We turned into a new winding of the valley--and there, walking towards us from the opposite direction, was a human figure at last--the figure of a solitary man!
As we got nearer to each other I perceived that he was a gentleman; dressed in a light shooting-jacket, and wearing a felt hat of the conical Italian shape.