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Her "book of takings" wasn't very good, poor thing, and if it didn't come up to a certain figure at the end of the week she would lose her place. She lost it after all. They told her she was too weak. After Christmas she was lucky enough to get a place as a lady's-maid at twenty-five pounds a year at Scotcher's she had fifteen.
In time she came there with a lady's-maid, her parcel in her pocket, on the evenings of the days that Monseigneur slept there. She remained in this apartment without seeing anybody, attended by her lady's-maid, and waited upon by a servant who alone was in the secret.
There should I be, going about as if the house were my own, and there would be my wife in the next room, or perhaps at my elbow, dressed in the finery of the lady's-maid of the house! It won't bear thinking of! I declare it makes me so ashamed, as I lie here, that I feel my face quite hot in the dark! To have to reason about such a thing with my own wife, too!"
There'd been a large dinner-party the night before, and the family was rather late. Steps were heard overhead in her ladyship's bedroom, and then Georgina comes in. `Come in here, Mr Hollands, she says, `and look here, both of you; see what I've found on the stairs! The butler came in, and the lady's-maid holds out to him a beautiful bracelet all sparkling with jewels.
The lady's-maid, imperturbable, just conceivably impertinent, in manner, had risen to her feet. "There," she said, "it will be secure for to-night, if madame will exercise a moderate degree of caution and avoid abrupt movements. Charles says that monsieur inquired very urgently after madame. He appeared dejected and in weak health. He was agitated on meeting Charles. He trembled.
Faulkner's beautiful house, Alison herself opened the door. Alison looked handsomer than ever in her neat lady's-maid costume. "Oh, Grannie," she exclaimed. "It is good for sore eyes to see you. Come in, come in. You can't think how kind Mrs. Faulkner is. Faulkner is out for the day. Oh, we'll have quite a good time. Come downstairs at once, dear Grannie, for dinner is waiting."
He argued that the trouble of the morning would in all probability have died away before dinner. If it showed signs of reviving or increasing in intensity he intended to dine in his room and go to bed early. The Queen felt it her duty to lecture Kalliope severely. No well-conducted lady's-maid ought to attack strange sailors with oars and knock out their front teeth.
When the pretty lady's-maid pulled a comb of ivory into the midst of the undulating and golden waves of that enormously magnificent skein of silk, one might have said that a thousand sparks of fire darted forth and coruscated away from it in all directions.
After playing lady's-maid to the new-comer, and putting my cakes in the oven, and making the house and kitchen cheerful with great fires, befitting Christmas-eve, I prepared to sit down and amuse myself by singing carols, all alone; regardless of Joseph's affirmations that he considered the merry tunes I chose as next door to songs.
For when he described the heavy coach and the persons in and upon it, and the breaking down at Dulverton, and the place of their destination, as well as the time and the weather, and the season of the year, my heart began to burn within me, and my mind replaced the pictures, first of the foreign lady's-maid by the pump caressing me, and then of the coach struggling up the hill, and the beautiful dame, and the fine little boy, with the white cockade in his hat; but most of all the little girl, dark-haired and very lovely, and having even in those days the rich soft look of Lorna.
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