Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles Part 68

"You are complimentary to convents, Bianca. Maudite in one breath, enfer in another!"

"They are all that, and worse!" intemperately responded the Italian girl. "They are--mais n'importe; c'est fini pour moi. I had to beat down my heart then, and stop in one. Ah! I know not how I did it. I look back and wonder. Seven years!"

"But who paid for you all that time?"

"My mother was not poor. She had enough for that. She made the arrangements with a priest when she was dying, and paid the money to him. The convent educated me, and dressed me, and made me hard. Their cold rules beat down my rebellious heart; beat it down to hardness. I should not have been so hard but for that convent!"

"Oh, you are hard, then?" was the remark of Herbert Dare.

"I can be!" nodded Mademoiselle Varsini. "Better not cross _me_!"

"And how did you get out of the convent?"

"When I was nineteen, they sent me out into a situation, to teach music and my own language, and French and English. They taught well in the convent: I could speak English then as readily as I speak it now: and they gave me a box of clothes and four five-franc pieces, saying that was the last of my mother's effects. What cared I? Had they turned me out penniless, I should have jumped to go. I served in that first situation two years. It was easy, and it was good pay."

"French people?"

"But certainly: Parisians. It was not more than one mile from the convent. There was but one little pupil."

"Why did you leave?"

"I was put into a pa.s.sion one day, and madame said after that she was frightened to keep me. Ah! I have had adventures, I can tell you. In the next place I did not stay three months; the ennui came to me, and I left it for another that I found; and the other one I liked--I had my liberty. I should have stayed in that, but one came and turned me out of it."

"A fresh governess?"

"No; a man. A hideous. He was madame's brother, and he was wrinkled and yellow, and his long skinny fingers were like claws. He wanted me to marry him; he said he was rich. Sell myself to that monster?

No!--continue a governess, rather. One evening madame and my two pupils had gone to the Odeon, and he came to the little etude where I sat. He locked the door, and said he would not unlock it till I gave him a promise to be his wife. I stormed, and I stormed: he tried to take my hand, the imbecile! He laughed at me, and said I was caged----"

"Why did you not ring the bell?" interrupted Herbert.

"Bon! Do we have bells in every room in the old Parisian houses? I would have pulled open the window, but he stood against the fastening, laughing still; so I dashed my hand through a pane, and the gla.s.s clattered down to the court below, and the servants came out to look up.

'I cannot undo the etude door,' I called to them; 'come and break it open!' So that hideous undid it then, and the servants got some water and bathed my hand. 'But why need the signora have put her hand through the gla.s.s? Why not have opened the window?' said one. 'What is that to you?' I said. 'You will not have to pay for it. Bind my hand up.' They wrapped it in a handkerchief, and I put on my bonnet and cloak, and went out. Madeleine--she was the cook, and a good old soul--saw me. 'But where is the signorina going so late as this?' she asked. 'Where should I be going, but to the pharmacien's?' I answered; and I went my way."

"We say chemist's in England," observed Herbert. "Did he find your hand much damaged?"

"I did not go there. Think you I made attention to my hand? I went to the--what you call it?--cutler's shops, through the Rue Montmartre, and I bought a two-edged stiletto. It was that long"--pointing from her wrist to the end of her finger--"besides the handle. I showed it to that hideous the next day. 'You come to the room where I sit again,' I said to him, 'and you will see.' He told madame his sister, and she said I must leave."

Herbert Dare looked at her--at her pale face, which had gone white in the telling, her glistening, stony eyes, her drawn lips. "You would not have dared to use the stiletto, though!" he cried, in some wonder.

"I not dare! You do not know me. When I am roused, there's not a thing I would not dare to do. I am not ruffled at trifles: things that excite others do not trouble me. 'Bah! What matter trifles?' I say. My mother always told me to let the evil spirit lie torpid within me, or I should not die in my bed."

"I say," cried Herbert, half mockingly, "what religion do you call yourself?"

She took the question literally. "I am a Catholic or Protestant as is agreeable to my places," was the very candid answer. "I am not a devote--a saint. Where's the use of it?"

"That is why you generally have those violent headaches on Sunday," said Herbert Dare, laughing. "You ought----"

There was an interruption. Rosa Dare's footsteps were heard on the stairs, and they halted at the door.

"Mademoiselle!" she called out.

Mademoiselle did not answer. Herbert Dare flung his handkerchief over the handle of the door in a manner that hid the key-hole. Rosa Dare tried the door, found it fastened, and went off grumbling.

"It's my belief mademoiselle locks herself in there to get a nap after dinner, as mamma does in the dining-room!"

She was heard to enter the drawing-room and slam the door. Herbert softly opened that of the school-room, and went down after his sister.

"I say, Herbert," cried Rosa, when he entered, "have you seen anything of mademoiselle?"

"I!" responded Herbert. "Do you think I keep mademoiselle in my pocket?"

"She goes and locks herself up in the school-room after dinner, and I can't think what she does there, or what she can be at," retorted Rosa.

"At her devotions, perhaps," suggested Herbert.

The words did not please Mrs. Dare, who had then joined the circle.

"Herbert, I will not have Mademoiselle Varsini ridiculed," she said quite sternly. "She is a most efficient instructress for Rosa and Minny, and we must be careful not to give her offence, or she might leave."

"I'm sure I have heard of foreign women telling their beads till c.o.c.k-crowing," persisted Herbert.

"Those are Roman Catholics. A Protestant, as is Mademoiselle Varsini----"

Mrs. Dare's angry words were cut short by the appearance of Mademoiselle Varsini herself. She, the governess, turned to Rosa. "What did you want just now when you came to the school-room door?"

"I wanted you here to show me that filet st.i.tch," answered Rosa, slight impertinence peeping out in her tone. "And I don't see why you should not answer when I knock, mademoiselle."

"It may not always suit me to answer," was the calm reply of the governess. "My time is my own after dinner; and Madame Dare will agree with me that a governess should hold full control over her school-room."

"You are perfectly right, mademoiselle," acquiesced Mrs. Dare.

Mademoiselle went to the piano and dashed off a symphony. She was a brilliant player. Herbert, looking at his watch, and finding it later than he thought, hurried from the house.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A VISION IN HONEY FAIR.

The surmise that the missing cheque had been changed into good money on the Sat.u.r.day night, proved to be correct. White, the butcher at the corner of the shambles, had given change for it, and locked up the cheque in the cash-box. Had he paid it into the bank on Monday, he would have found what it was worth. But he did not do so. Mr. White was a fat man with a good-humoured countenance and black hair. Sergeant Delves proceeded to his house some time on the Tuesday.

"I hear you cashed a cheque of the Messrs. Dunn on Sat.u.r.day night,"

began he. "Who brought it to you?"

"Ah, what about that cheque?" returned the butcher. "One of your men has been in here, asking a lot of questions."