"I should think it would!" Edith agreed, laughing.
"Did I speak?" said Angelica.
"Yes," Edith answered. "You informed me that you are going to stay here in order to punish Diavolo by depriving him of your society for a time."
"I am sure I did not say all that!" Angelica exclaimed.
"Well, not exactly, perhaps," Edith confessed; "but you led me to infer it."
"Well, I will stay," Angelica decided. "Aunt Fulda, I"m going to stay here for a few days with Edith," she answered.
"Very well, dear," her aunt meekly rejoined. "Are you going to stay now?"
"Yes. Tell Elizabeth to bring me some wearing apparel."
As they drove back to Morne, Lady Claudia scolded Lady Fulda for so weakly allowing Angelica to have her own way in everything.
"I thought you would agree with me that the sweet womanly influence at the palace would do her good," Lady Fulda answered, in an injured tone.
""Sweet womanly" _nonsense_!" said Lady Claude. "She will twist them all round her little finger, and turn the whole place upside down before she leaves, or I am much mistaken."
"Well, dear, If you would only make Angelica do what _you_ wish while you are here to influence her I should be thankful," Lady Fulda rejoined with gentle dignity.
Lady Claudia said no more.
Things went merrily at the palace for the rest of the day. Mrs. Orton Beg called, and Mr. Kilroy of Ilverthorpe, between whom and Angelica there was always an excellent understanding; and she entertained him now with observations and anecdotes which so amused Edith that, as Mrs. Beale said to the bishop afterward: "The dear, naughty child quite took her out of herself."
Angelica had never been in the same house with a baby before, and she was all interest. Whatever defects of character the new women may eventually acquire, lack of maternal affection will not be one of them.
"Have you seen the baby?" she asked Elizabeth, when the latter was brushing her hair for dinner. He had not been visible during the afternoon, but Angelica had thought of him incessantly.
"Yes, Miss," Elizabeth answered.
"Is he a pretty baby?" Angelica wanted to know.
Elizabeth pursed up her lips with an air of reserve.
"You don"t think so?" Angelica said--she had seen the maid"s face in the mirror before her. "What is he like?"
"He"s exactly like the bishop, Miss."
Angelica broke into a broad smile at herself in the gla.s.s. "What! a little old man baby!" she exclaimed.
"Yes, Miss--with a cold in his head," the maid said seriously.
When she was dressed, Angelica went to make his acquaintance. On the way she discovered her particular friend, the bishop, going furtively in the same direction, and slipped her hand through his arm.
"We"ll go together," she said confidentially, taking it for granted that his errand was the same as her own.
The nurse was undressing the child when they entered, and Edith sat watching her. She was already dressed for the evening, and looked worse in an elaborate toilet than she had done in her morning dress. A stranger would have found it hard to believe that only the year before she had been radiantly healthy and beautiful. The puzzled, pathetic expression again in her eyes as she watched the child. She had no smile for him, and uttered no baby words to him--nor had he a smile for her. He was old, old already, and exhausted with suffering, and as his gaze wandered from one to the other it was easy to believe that he was asking each dumbly why had he ever been born?
"Is _that_ Edith"s baby?" Angelica exclaimed in her astonishment and horror under her breath, slipping her hand from the bishop"s arm.
She had seen enough in one momentary glance, and she fled from the room.
The bishop followed her. Mrs. Beale was there when they entered, standing behind her daughter"s chair, but she did not look at her husband, nor he at her. For the first time in their married life, poor souls, they were afraid to meet each other"s eyes.
CHAPTER VII.
Next day, in the afternoon, Mrs. Beale being otherwise engaged, Edith proposed that she and Angelica should go for a drive together. Edith was feeling better, and Angelica had recovered her equanimity. She suggested that they should drive toward Fountain Towers. Edith had not been on that road since her marriage, and when they pa.s.sed the place where she and her mother had seen the young French girl lying insensible on the pathway with her baby beside her she was reminded of the incident, and described it to Angelica, adding: "I have so often longed to know what became of her."
"I can tell you," said Angelica. "I know her quite well by sight. She is living with Nurse Griffiths, in Honeysuckle Cottage, on Dr. Galbraith"s estate. Nurse Griffiths told us he brought her there one day in his carriage very ill, and she has been there ever since. He always gets angry and snaps at you if he"s bothered about anybody who"s ill or unfortunate, and Diavolo and I met him that day coming away from the cottage, and he spoke to us so shortly we were sure there was something bad the matter, so we went to see what it was, and Nurse Griffiths said she was French. I"ve not been there since, but I expect it"s the same girl. Shall we stop and see? We pa.s.s the end of the lane where the cottage is."
Edith agreed eagerly. She said it would be a relief to her mind to know that the girl was well cared for and happy.
"Oh, everybody is well cared for and happy on Dr. Galbraith"s estate,"
said Angelica. "His tenants worship him. And they would rather be abused by him than complimented by anybody else."
The cottage, covered with the honeysuckle from which it took its name, stood in a large old-fashioned garden, at the edge of a fir plantation, which sheltered it from the northeast wind at the back, and filled the air about it with balsamic fragrance.
Edith and Angelica left the carriage at the end of the lane and walked up.
"What a lovely spot!" Edith exclaimed. "On a still bright day like this it makes one realize what the Saints meant by "holy calm," I think I should like to live in such a place, and never hear another echo from the outside world."
"I suppose you would just like to add dear Mosley to the establishment,"
Angelica suggested.
Edith"s heart contracted. She had not thought of her husband, and now when she did it was with a pang, because she could not include him in her idea of Eden.
The French girl was standing at the door of the cottage with a child in her arms.
"Is Nurse Griffiths in?" Angelica asked.
Edith looked at the child. It should have been running about by that time, but it was small and rickety, with bones that bent beneath its weight, slight as it was. Edith had looked at it first with some interest, but its unhealthy appearance repelled her. She managed, however, to speak to the girl about it kindly.
"What is your baby"s name?" she asked.
"Mosley Menteith," was the answer.
For a moment it seemed to Edith as if all the world were blotted out, and then again the hum of bees, the chirrup of birds, the fall of a fir-cone, the call of the c.o.c.k-pheasant in the wood sounded obtrusively, making the girl"s voice as she continued speaking appear far off and indistinct.
"I called him after his father, then, didn"t I?" she was saying to the baby in good English, but with a French accent. "And he"s to grow up, and be a big strong fellow and beat his father, isn"t he, for he"s a bad, bad man!"
Nurse Griffiths hearing voices in the porch came out.
"Hush, Louise," she said to the girl. "You"ve no call to talk in that way now. You must excuse her," she added to the ladies. "She"s had a bad bringing up."