“Miss Rosalind,” said Jane, “my lady is right. It is a foe and nothing less, a real enemy she has in that woman; if she would send Russell away I’d be very glad for one.”
“You need not fear, my love,” Madam said. “Hush, Jane, if she is my foe, you are my partisan. I will never send Russell away, Rosalind; but when the children are grown up, if I live to see it, or if she would be so kind as to marry, and go off in a happy way, or even if when you are married she preferred to go with you—I think I should draw my breath more freely. It is painful to be under a hostile eye.”
“The nurse’s eye, mamma, and you the mistress of the house!”
“It does not matter, my dear. I have always had a sympathy for Haman, who could not enjoy his grandeur for thinking of that Jew in the gate that was always looking at him so cynically. It gets unendurable sometimes. You must have a very high opinion of yourself to get over the low view taken of you by that sceptic sitting in the gate. But now I must go to your father,” Mrs. Trevanion said. She had come up-stairs with a headache, and had sat down by the open window to get a little air, though the air was intensely cold and damp. It was a refreshment, after the closeness of the room in which the invalid sat with an unvarying temperature and every draught shut out. Rosalind stood behind her mother’s chair with her hands upon Mrs. Trevanion’s shoulders, and the tired woman leaned back upon the girl’s young bosom so full of life. “But you will catch cold at the window, my Rose! No, it does me good, I want a little air, but it is too cold for you. And now I must go back to your father,” she said, rising. She stooped and kissed the cheek of the girl she loved, and went away with a smile to her martyrdom. These moments of withdrawal from her heavy duties were the consolations of her life.
“Miss Rosalind,” said Jane, “that you should love your old nurse I don’t say a word against it—but if ever there is a time when a blow can be struck at my lady that woman will do it. She will never let the little ones be here when their mamma can see them. They’re having their sleep, or they’re out walking, or they’re at their lessons; and Miss Sophy the same. And if ever she can do us an ill turn—”
“How could she do you an ill turn? That is, Jane, I beg your pardon, she might, perhaps, be nasty to you—but, mamma! What blow, as you call it, can be struck at mamma?”
“Oh, how can I tell?” said Jane; “I never was clever; there’s things happening every day that no one can foresee; and when a woman is always watching to spy out any crevice, you never can tell, Miss Rosalind, in this world of trouble, what may happen unforeseen.”
This speech made no great impression on Rosalind’s mind at the time, but it recurred to her after, and gave her more trouble than any wickedness of Russell’s had power to do. In the meantime, leaving Jane, she went to the nursery, and with the preoccupation of youth carried with her the same subject, heedless and unthinking what conclusions Russell, whose faculties were always alert on this question, might draw.
“Russell,” she said, after a moment, “why are you always so disagreeable to mamma?”
“Miss Rosalind, I do hate to hear you call her mamma. Why don’t you say ‘my stepmother,’ as any other young lady would in your place?”
“Because she is not my stepmother,” said the girl, with a slight stamp on the floor. “Just look at little Johnny, taking in all you say with his big eyes. She is all the mother I have ever known, and I love her better than any one in the world.”
“And just for that I can’t bear it,” cried the woman. “What would your own dear mamma say?”
“If she were as jealous and ill-tempered as you I should not mind what she said,” said the girl. “Don’t think, if you continue like this, you will ever have any sympathy from me.”
“Oh, Miss Rosalind, what you are saying is as bad as swearing; worse, it’s blasphemy; and the time will come when you’ll remember and be sorry. No, though you think I’m a brute, I sha’n’t say anything before the children. But the time will come—”
“What a pity you are not on the stage, Russell! You would make a fine Meg Merrilies, or something of that kind; the old woman that is always cursing somebody and prophesying trouble. That is just what you are suited for. I will come and see you your first night.”
“Me! on the stage!” cried Russell, with a sense of outraged dignity which words cannot express. Such an insult had never been offered to her before. Rosalind went out of the room quickly, angry but laughing when she had given this blow. She wanted to administer a stinging chastisement, and she had done so. Her own cleverness in discovering what would hit hardest pleased her. She began to sing, out of wrathful indignation and pleasure, as she went down-stairs.
“Me! on the stage!” Russell repeated to herself. A respectable upper servant in a great house could not have had a more degrading suggestion made to her. She could have cried as she sat there gnashing her teeth. And this too was all on account of Madam, the strange woman who had taken her first mistress’s place even in the heart of her own child. Perhaps if Rosalind had treated her stepmother as a stepmother ought to be treated, Russell would have been less antagonistic; but Mrs. Trevanion altogether was obnoxious to her. She had come from abroad; she had brought her own maid with her, who was entirely unsociable, and never told anything; who was a stranger, a foreigner perhaps, for anything that was known of her, and yet was Russell’s equal, or more, by right of Madam’s favor, though Russell had been in the house for years. What subtle antipathy there might be besides these tangible reasons for hating them, Russell did not know. She only knew that from the first moment she had set eyes upon her master’s new wife she had detested her. There was something about her that was not like other women. There must be a secret. When had it ever been known that a maid gave up everything—the chat, the game at cards, the summer stroll in the park, even the elegant civilities of a handsome butler—for the love of her mistress? It was unnatural; no one had ever heard of such a thing. What could it be but a secret between these women which held them together, which it was their interest to conceal from the world? But the time would come, Russell said to herself. If she watched night and day she should find it out; if she waited for years and years the time and opportunity would come at last.
CHAPTER VIII.
This conversation, or series of conversations, took place shortly before the time at which this history begins, and it was very soon after that the strange course of circumstances commenced which was of so much importance in the future life of the Trevanions of Highcourt. When the precise moment was at which the attention of Rosalind was roused and her curiosity excited, she herself could not have told. It was not until Madam Trevanion had fallen for some time into the singular habit of disappearing after dinner, nobody knew where. It had been very usual with her to run up to the nursery when she left the dining-room, to see if the children were asleep. Mr. Trevanion, when he was at all well, liked to sit, if not over his wine, for he was abstemious by force of necessity, yet at the table, talking with whomsoever might be his guest. Though his life was so little adapted to the habits of hospitality, he liked to have some one with whom he could sit and talk after dinner, and who would make up his rubber when he went into the drawing-room. He had been tolerably well,