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Updated: June 15, 2025
He muttered under his breath, "Oh, bother!" Zo held out her plate for more. Mr. Gallilee was delighted. "My child all over!" he exclaimed. "We are both of us good feeders. Zo will grow up a fine woman." He appealed to his stepson to agree with him. "That's your medical opinion, Ovid, isn't it?" Carmina's pretty smile passed like rippling light over her eyes and her lips.
His experience, brief as it had been, had satisfied him that stupid Mr. Null's course of action could be trusted to let the instructive progress of the malady proceed. Mr. Null would treat the symptoms in perfect good faith without a suspicion of the nervous hysteria which, in such a constitution as Carmina's, threatened to establish itself, in course of time, as the hidden cause.
Carmina's rare smile showed itself faintly. The terrible first interview with the unknown aunt still oppressed her. She took up a newspaper in despair. "Oh, my old dear!" she said, "let us get out of this dreadful room, and be reminded of Italy!" Teresa lifted her ugly hands in bewilderment. "Reminded of Italy in London?" "Is there no Italian music in London?" Carmina asked suggestively.
"What did I tell you, when the mistress first sent me out in the carriage with poor Miss Carmina? Didn't I say that I was no spy, and that I wouldn't submit to be made one? I would have left the house I would! but for Miss Carmina's kindness. Any other young lady would have made me feel my mean position. She treated me like a friend and I don't forget it.
I don't know which disgusts me most Zoe's impudent stupidity, or Maria's unendurable humbug." She had never yet spoken of Maria in this way. Even her voice seemed to be changed. Instead of betraying the usual angry abruptness, her tones coldly indicated impenetrable contempt. In the silence that ensued, she looked up, and saw Carmina's eyes resting on her anxiously and kindly.
But for restraining motives, the governess might have gratified her hatred of Carmina by a sharp reply. She had her reasons not only after what she had overheard in the conservatory, but after what she had seen in the Gardens for winning Carmina's confidence, and exercising over her the influence of a trusted friend. Miss Minerva made instant use of her first opportunity.
This change of abode would prevent any collision between Mrs. Gallilee and Teresa, and would make Carmina's life as peaceful, and even as happy, as she could wish.
Gallilee alone looked round when the nurse tightened her hold in a last merciless grasp; dashed the insensible woman on the floor; and, turning back, fell on her knees at her darling's feet. She looked up in Carmina's face. A ghastly stare, through half-closed eyes, showed death in life, blankly returning her look. The shock had struck Carmina with a stony calm.
"I know why Carmina's excited," she said. "The old woman's coming at six o'clock." He paid no attention to the child; he persisted in keeping watch on Carmina. "Who is the woman?" he asked. "The most lovable woman in the world," she cried; "my dear old nurse!" She started up from the sofa, and pointed with theatrical exaggeration of gesture to the clock on the mantelpiece.
Not finding her niece in the house, she had thought of the Square. What could be more natural than that the cousins should take an evening walk, in one of the prettiest enclosures in London? Her anticipation of Ovid's recovery, and her admiration of Carmina's powers of persuasion appeared, for the time, to be the only active ideas in that comprehensive mind.
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