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The interview which took place between Feather and Lord Coombe a few days later had its own special character. "A governess will come here tomorrow at eleven o'clock," he said. "She is a Mademoiselle Valle. She is accustomed to the educating of young children. She will present herself for your approval. Benby has done all the rest." Feather flushed to her fine-spun ash-gold hair.
It had become understood that on such occasions as there was anything she wished to communicate or inquire concerning, Mr. Benby, in his private room, was at Mademoiselle's service, and there his lordship could also be met personally by appointment. "There have been no explanations," Mademoiselle Valle said to Dowson.
In the folds of the vague mist quietly floated the truth that she now liked her less. Benby came to see and talk to her on the business of the structural changes to be made. He conducted himself precisely as though her views on the matter were of value and could not, in fact, be dispensed with. He brought the architect's plans with him and explained them with care.
"Thirty pounds a year, my lord." "Go tomorrow morning to Benby, who engaged you for Mrs. Gareth-Lawless. He will be at his office by nine and will pay you what is owed to you and a month's wages in lieu of notice." "The mistress " began Andrews. "I have spoken to Mrs. Gareth-Lawless." It was a lie, serenely told. Feather was doing a new skirt dance in the drawing-room. "She is engaged.
She had been mystically produced by Benby and her bonnets and jackets alone would have revealed her selection from almost occult treasures. She wore bonnets and "jackets," not hats and coats. "In the calm days of Her Majesty, nurses dressed as she does. I do not mean in the riotous later years of her reign but earlier when England dreamed in terms of Crystal Palaces and Great Exhibitions.
Being swift to reason and practical in deduction, Mademoiselle Valle did not make the blunder of deciding that this light presence argued that she would be under no supervision more serious. The excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted and the excellent Benby, one was made aware, acted under clearly defined orders.
Mr. Benby, who did everything, conducted himself outwardly as if he were a sort of man of business in Mrs. Gareth-Lawless' employ. It was open to the lenient to believe that she depended on some mysterious private income. There were people who preferred to try to believe this, but there were those who, in some occult way, knew exactly where her income came from.
"The new nurse, who is a highly respectable person," explained Benby, "could not have been secured if she had not known that improvements were being made. The reconstruction of the third floor will provide suitable accommodations." The special forte of Dowson, the new nurse, was a sublimated respectability far superior to smartness.
But her husband had met with an accident and must be kept in a hospital, and an invalid daughter must live by the seaside and suddenly, when things were at their worst with her, had come Benby with a firm determination to secure her with wages such as no other place would offer. Besides which she had observed as she had lived. "Things have changed," she reflected soberly.
"You've got to resign yourself and not be too particular." She accepted the third floor, as Benby had said, because it was to be rearranged and the Night and Day Nurseries, being thrown into one, repainted and papered would make a decent place to live in.
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