CHAPTER III.

THE SECRET.

There was something mysterious about Mr. Lovett’s manner and behaviour after he returned from that visit to Rille, which I could not account for. In the first place he was in the very best and highest of spirits, and the most extravagant dinners appeared upon the table for two days in consequence, whilst he lavished more than his usual affection and caresses upon his daughters and myself. Then, there seemed to be preparations going on for some great event.

A peasant woman was hired to clean all the upper part of the house, and for forty-eight hours remained on her knees in an attitude of adoration, scrubbing vigorously at the boards whilst Madame Marmoret stood over her and shrieked that she was a pig and a fool not to work faster. A spare chamber that had possessed no furniture of its own except a bedstead, suddenly became habitable, by reason of articles being secretly abstracted from our rooms, to repair its deficiencies.

I know that I missed a chair, a side-table and a water-bottle and tumbler, but no cross-questioning of Madame Marmoret ever elicited the fact that she had had any hand in their removal.

The next thing that happened was that Tessie and Ange were taken into their father’s confidence, and were evidently much gratified by what he told them. Tessie, who was always cheerful but seldom merry, went about the house singing like a bird, whilst she helped Madame Marmoret to starch and iron muslin curtains and draperies; and Ange, whose happy face I had never yet seen clouded, seemed bursting with the weight of some pleasant secret which she had the greatest difficulty in preventing her lips from disclosing. A dozen times a day she threw her arms around me, exclaiming:

‘Oh, Hilda! I _am_ so happy!’

But when I asked her why, her rosy mouth was resolutely closed, and she said I should know it all soon, and I must be patient and wait. So I was patient, concluding that Mr. Lovett had received some good news of a private nature, in which none but his daughters had any right to share. A remark or two dropped by Tessie, relative to a change and a stroke of good-fortune, confirmed me in this opinion. I thought that his visit to Rille might have led to an interview with some clerical grandee, and the result was, the prospect of leaving St. Pucelle for a living of greater value.

I could not tell why, but as I dwelt on this idea, it gave me pain. I had already learned to love the quaint little town and its surroundings, and the thought of new scenes and faces disquieted me.

Meanwhile, the silver earrings arrived. Mrs. Carolus had executed my commission with more taste than I had given her credit for, and the massive Normandy work of which they were composed was the handsomest thing of its kind I had ever seen. My only trouble was that I had not yet received the money wherewith to pay for them. Mr. Lovett had been so exceedingly kind and generous in his offer to me on the occasion of my speaking of my allowance, that I did not like to worry him on the subject again so soon, especially as his mind seemed full of more important matters. Besides, he would be likely to inquire for what I required the money, and find fault with me for spending too much upon his little maid.

The only resource left to me, therefore, was to tell the truth to Mrs. Carolus and ask her for a few days’ grace, which I did by letter, as St. Pucelle was visited by a succession of showers about that time, and we were almost kept prisoners to the house.

At last Ange’s birthday—her _jour de fête_ as she called it—arrived, and the little maid completed her eighteenth year. I was waked early in the morning by a commotion of voices chattering in the Wallon _patois_ beneath my window, and getting up to see what was the matter, my eyes encountered a score or two of grinning faces upturned to mine, the owners of which held large bouquets of flowers in their hands. But the disappointment visible as soon as I appeared proved it was not me for whom they had assembled.

‘_Ce n’est pas la petite Ange!_’ they said to one another, shaking their heads the while. In another minute the casement next to mine was thrown open, and I knew that Ange’s sweet face was framed in it, by the roar of delight with which she was received. ‘_Bon jour, ma’m’sel!_’ ‘_Bonheur, ma’m’sel!_’ ‘_Que le bon Dieu te bénisse, petite Ange!_’ resounded from every side, whilst the bunches of flowers were held up simultaneously, till they looked like a forest of blossom.

‘I will be with you directly, dear friends,’ exclaimed Ange, in their own _patois_; and the next moment I saw her in the very midst of them, kissing the women, shaking hands with the men, and laughing and crying by turns, as she attempted to carry in her apron one half the flowers they had brought her. One old woman went down on her knees in the middle of the road and kissed the child’s feet.

‘She saved my boy’s life! He would have died if she had not helped to nurse him with me,’ she said, with the tears running down her yellow, withered cheeks.

In her hands she held up a common wooden chaplet, black with dirt and age.

‘See, _petite_ Ange,’ she continued, ‘it is all I have to bring you. It is not much, but my poor daughter died with it in her hand, praying the good God to bless all His saints upon earth. And you are one of them; and this chaplet must surely bring a blessing upon you.’

Amidst the crowd I distinguished Mère Fromard, the woman who had addressed me by the Calvary during the first week of my sojourn in St. Pucelle.

‘I would have brought the best offering of them all, ma’m’selle,’ she said, ‘but you know the reason that prevents me!’

Ange went up to her and touched her forehead with her lips.

‘All will come right in time, Mère Fromard,’ she answered cheerfully. ‘Trust to God! And how is your husband this morning?’

The woman gave some ordinary reply, and moved away in the crowd; but the look she directed at Ange was a strange mixture of surprise, incredulity and despair.

‘It is not _her_ fault!’ I heard her mutter, as she fell back to give place to some one else.

When we descended to the _salle_ for breakfast, we found it transformed into a perfect bower of sweets. Flowers bloomed upon the mantelpiece, the buffet and the floor, whilst in the centre of the table was a magnificent nosegay of every coloured rose, which had come from the château for Mademoiselle Ange, with the compliments of Monsieur le Baron. And amidst them all moved the little maid, flushed like the very heart of a rose herself, with unalloyed happiness beaming in her eyes and irradiating every feature of her expressive face.

‘Oh, papa!’ she exclaimed, when at last her excitement had somewhat subsided, and we persuaded her to sit down to her meal. ‘I feel as if this day was to be the commencement of a new life for me!’

Our little offerings had already been presented and duly thanked for. Tessie’s new muslin apron adorned her slender waist; at her right hand lay a book her father had bought for her in Rille, and my silver earrings flashed and sparkled in her ears.

To say that Ange was pleased with my thought of her is to say too little. She was a true woman, and delighted in the adornment of her beauty as she delighted in flowers and birds and children and all the other gifts of heaven. She had coloured to her very eyes with innocent pleasure when I first put the ornaments in her hand, and had stood for ten minutes before the glass, shaking and nodding her graceful little head, in order to see them sparkle.

Mr. Lovett, too, whose censure for extravagance I had feared, seemed almost as gratified as the child herself at the manner in which the dangling silver things became her, and thanked me more than once for giving her so handsome a present, though he never thought of asking me how I had been able to pay the sum they had cost. Tessie alone appeared to be annoyed at my disregarding her advice, and indifferent to her sister’s joy in her new possessions. Was she jealous, I thought, because I was in a position to make Ange a more valuable gift than herself? Surely Tessie, with her sweet good-nature and noble heart, could never stoop to the indulgence of so mean a feeling as that? Yet she left me quite unable otherwise to account for her silence and grave looks whenever the silver earrings were brought beneath her notice.

The post only arrived once a day at St. Pucelle, and whilst we were in the middle of breakfast, Monsieur le Facteur, as Madame Marmoret politely designated him, rapped sharply with his knuckles on the window-shutter and delivered a letter to Ange through the open casement.

It was for Mr. Lovett, and evidently contained agreeable news, for as he read it he exclaimed: ‘Look here, girls!’ which made Tessie and Ange fly to peruse its contents over their father’s shoulder, when all three faces beamed with pleasure and anticipation.

‘On your birthday, too, Ange! This is quite a coincidence,’ said my guardian presently; ‘and we must have a little fête in consequence. My dear Hilda, it is time I told you——’

‘No, no, papa!’ cried Ange, clapping her hand before his mouth. ‘Don’t tell her yet. Let it be a surprise. It will be such a tremendous one! and you will spoil it all if you say a word beforehand.’

‘Don’t make it too great a surprise, my little maid, or it may have a serious effect upon poor Hilda.’

‘Oh, papa, how funny you are! As if anything _nice_ could hurt one! And Tessie and I have agreed that this change is to be a very, _very_ nice one indeed!’

‘If it is the solution of the mystery that has occupied you all for the last few days,’ I interposed, ‘you need not be afraid of the _dénouement_ proving fatal to me, for I have all but guessed it for myself.’

‘What is it then, Hilda?’ demanded Ange.

‘First, it has something to do with a change in the establishment.’

‘That is right!’

‘And it grew out of your father’s visit to Rille last week.’

‘Right again! I believe Tessie has been telling you.’

‘I have done no such thing!’ retorted her sister, indignantly. ‘Did we not promise papa to say nothing till it was certain?’

‘I can vouch for my knowledge being the result of my own sharpness only,’ I said; ‘so you must blame no one else, Ange!’

‘Very well. What more has your sharpness discovered?’

‘That there is a gentleman connected with this change.’

‘She _does_ know it!’ ejaculated Ange, with a very suspicious expression of countenance. ‘You must have overheard us talking of it, Hilda.’

‘With my ear to the keyhole! No, Ange dear, that is not my usual method of gaining information. Well, then, for a final guess! This change will take you away from St. Pucelle.’

‘Take _me_ away, do you mean? or take us _all_ away?’

‘All, of course—bag and baggage—and give you a new home somewhere else.’

‘Oh no; that’s wrong!’ said Ange, shaking her head determinately—‘_quite_ wrong!’

‘What! Shall you stay in St. Pucelle?’

‘Of course! Where else should we go? What would papa do without his living?’

‘Oh, then I’m out altogether, and my other guesses go for nothing. The gentleman and the change that is connected with your father’s visit to Rille remain unfathomable mysteries to me. I see I have been on a wrong tack.’

‘I’m _so_ glad!’ cried Ange, clapping her hands. ‘Now, as a punishment for daring to guess at all, you shall not hear a single word of the wonderful change until it actually takes place. Do you understand, Hilda?’

‘Perfectly! and as it is your _jour de fête_, I suppose you are to be allowed to tyrannise over your betters with impunity. I only hope when the revelation comes, that it will not be so startling as to prevent my surviving it.’

Mr. Lovett had been laughing heartily all through this little episode. He seemed perfectly to enter into his daughters’ delight at teasing me about their wonderful secret, at which Tessie proved to be as good as her sister; and I think it would have been difficult to find more cheerful faces in St. Pucelle than rose from our breakfast-table that morning.

Naturally I suffered a great deal during the remainder of that day from the hands of both my young friends. They were running about the house like busy bees all the morning, helping in the kitchen and the bedchambers; but whenever they crossed my path, they seized the opportunity to taunt me with my ignorance concerning their secret.

I am sure, if bright-haired Ange regretted once during those few hours that she had vowed her lips should remain sealed until the revelation of the household mystery was close at hand, she must have regretted it fifty times; but she made up for her self-imposed reticence by chattering without ceasing to Madame Marmoret in the Wallon dialect. That amiable individual appeared to accept the impending change with wonderful tranquillity, although it was certainly putting her to a great deal of extra trouble. I did, indeed, once overhear her grumbling that she hoped things might turn out as they expected: that, for her own part, she had lost hope altogether, and never anticipated any better lot than to end her days in the poorhouse.

I saw Tessie, on that occasion, leave the work on which she was engaged, and walking up to the cross-grained old servant, put her arms about her neck and beg her to be patient.

Why was Tessie always the comforter, I thought, when Madame Marmoret’s ebullitions of temper had reached their culminating point? Ange, who was all love and pity for the poor, and whom Madame had reared from an infant—Ange, I should have imagined would have been the readier of the two to soothe and console her.

But the little maid, notwithstanding her universal charity abroad, never seemed to realise that any one within the house could stand in need of consolation. They lived under the same roof as her father—that father whom she credited with being the best, most lovable, most honourable, and most holy creature upon earth: and what could they possibly want more?

I believe that is really the way in which innocent Ange thought of us all. I have heard her say that Tessie and she were sure to be married some day, because if men did not wish to marry them for their own sakes, they would do so for the glory of being able to call Mr. Lovett by the name of ‘father.’ And this without a shade of coquetry or self-consciousness, passing over the unclouded mirror of her lovely face.

The remainder of the _jour de fête_ passed very quietly; but I could see, as the afternoon waned, that the portentous secret was growing too big to be held much longer in the ‘durance vile’ of silence. Even a visit from the Abbé Morteville (one of the pleasantest and most intellectual of our acquaintances), with a beautiful little statuette, which he had had sent all the way from Paris to place on Ange’s mantelpiece, could not do more than engage her attention for the few minutes that it endured.

The dinner-table, which was not usually laid in the _salle_ till six o’clock, was ready that day by five. A snow-white cloth adorned the board, whilst at the four corners were placed, alternately, bowls of whipped cream and custard, and dishes of ripe fruit and _gaufres_, made by Tessie’s own hands. In the centre of the table bloomed the Baron’s beautiful roses; any one could see it was a _fête_-day, by the unusual grandeur of the preparations. The girls had not changed their black serge dresses—indeed, I knew by that time that they had no others to change; and I often wondered on what they spent the allowance which their father had told me he paid them quarterly—but they wore white muslin aprons and kerchiefs; and Ange had a bunch of damask roses glowing in her bosom. I remember thinking, as I saw her slender figure darting from room to room that day, that I had never seen her look so charmingly youthful and pretty before.

At last the discordant voice of the cow-horn, by which the diligence usually heralded its approach from Artois, was heard winding along the valley.

‘Papa, papa!’ exclaimed Ange, all excitement, as she rushed about to get his hat and stick, ‘do you not hear old François’s horn? Run along quick, or you will be a great deal too late! You know how he always whips up his poor little mules, as soon as he has turned the corner of the road, to pretend they have been racing all the way from Artois! And Madame has everything ready in the kitchen—only waiting to be dished up on your return. Such dear little ortolans, papa! Monsieur de Nesselrode sent them down this afternoon for you, with his compliments; and Madame has the most delicious secret way of dressing them you ever knew! But if you don’t make haste——’

‘And how am I to make haste, you little puss, if you cling to me after this fashion? Give me my stick and let me go! I shall be back again within the next ten minutes.’

‘And _now_ for the secret!’ cried Ange, as she jumped upon my lap, and clasped her arms round my neck. ‘_Now_, Hilda, you must be told! It is coming very, very close, and in a few minutes you will know all.’

‘What a portentous expression!’ I said, laughing. ‘It is like the _dénouement_ of one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s novels. I suppose I may conclude one thing, however, Ange, and that is, that the secret is coming in the diligence from Artois.’

‘Yes, yes! it is!’

‘And that it wears trousers!’

‘Yes, yes! Hilda, you are very clever. You always guess right.’

‘But _who_ is this mysterious stranger, then? and why have you kept me in the dark about him so long?’

‘Because we were not quite sure if it would come to pass,’ said Tessie, in her soft voice; ‘you see, Hilda, when papa went to Rille last week, he met a gentleman whom we——’

‘Oh, Tessie! do let me tell her!’ pleaded Ange, after which they continued to interrupt each other, much in this fashion: ‘Yes, he met a gentleman who wanted to come here for a few months——’

‘To shoot in the forest, you know——’

‘Yes! to shoot or to fish or to do anything he liked, but he couldn’t get rooms in the hotel——’

‘Well, he could have got rooms, Ange, but they were not so nice as he desired——’

‘Anyway, papa asked him to come and stay with us—but he wouldn’t hear of it——’

‘Knowing that we are not rich, you understand, Hilda——’

‘But he said if papa would let him board with us, he would come for three months certain——’

‘And perhaps longer, as he may stay over the winter——’

‘If he likes the shooting he will: and he is going to pay us such a lot of money——’

‘Hush, Ange! I don’t think papa would like you to tell that part of it.’

‘Why not? He couldn’t come here without he did pay—and papa would not have accepted his offer if it had been too much.’

‘Certainly not! still I think it would be fairer to him, as well as papa, to let that matter rest between themselves.’

‘You are quite right, Tessie,’ I interposed, ‘and I would rather not hear any more about the financial part of the arrangement.’

‘Of course it is a good thing for us any way, Hilda. You will understand that; and we hope it will be agreeable, too. That is why we have all looked so pleased the last few days.’

‘It _must_ be agreeable,’ said Ange, with a heightened colour, ‘because papa says it will. And we thought he wouldn’t come till next week, until the letter arrived for papa this morning, and——’

‘Hullo, hullo! Who is that taking my name in vain?’ exclaimed Mr. Lovett, from the open doorway; and Ange leapt off my lap as if she had been shot, and we all three rose to our feet to receive the expected stranger. I saw Tessie move forward first, and heard her utter a few shy words of welcome, but Ange had to be dragged to the front by her father, before she could be induced to contribute her share to our hospitable greeting. Then Mr. Lovett mentioned my name as that of his adopted daughter, Hilda Marsh, and I left the vine-covered embrasure of the window in which I had hitherto concealed myself, to encounter—_Cave Charteris_!

[Illustration: [Fleuron]]