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Updated: June 2, 2025
Miss Ladd interposed. "It is I who wish to speak to you, Mrs. Ellmother. For some days past, I have been sorry to see you looking ill." "I never was ill in my life, ma'am." Miss Ladd gently persisted. "I hear that you have lost your appetite." "I never was a great eater, ma'am." It was evidently useless to risk any further allusion to Mrs. Ellmother's symptoms.
"Speak out plainly; and try it's not easy, I know but try to begin at the beginning." Mrs. Ellmother looked back through her memory of past events, and began by alluding to the feeling of curiosity which she had excited in Francine, on the day when Emily had made them known to one another.
Ellmother will tell me if your mind is more at ease; Mrs. Ellmother will tell me if there is any new trial of your fortitude. She needn't even mention that I have been speaking to her at the door; and she may be sure, and you may be sure, that I shall ask no inquisitive questions. I can feel for you in your misfortune, without wishing to know what that misfortune is.
Alban Morris, when we get back?" she asked. "I should like to see him, miss if you have no objection." "Tell him I am ashamed of myself! and say I ask his pardon with all my heart!" "The Lord be praised!" Mrs. Ellmother burst out and then, when it was too late, remembered the conventional restraints appropriate to the occasion. "Gracious, what a fool I am!" she said to herself.
She felt the merciless persistency of Francine, as if it had been an insult offered to herself. "Give it up!" she said sharply. "Leave me, my dear, to manage my own business," Francine replied. "About your qualifications?" she continued, turning coolly to Mrs. Ellmother. "Can you dress hair?" "Yes." "I ought to tell you," Francine insisted, "that I am very particular about my hair."
Do you know what color her eyes are? Red, poor soul red as a boiled lobster." With every word the woman uttered, Emily's perplexity and distress increased. "You told me my aunt's illness was fever," she said "and now you speak of some complaint in her eyes. Stand out of the way, if you please, and let me go to her." Mrs. Ellmother, still keeping her place, looked through the open door.
But who was the man, so bitterly and so regretfully alluded to? No: this time Emily held firmly by the resolution which bound her to respect the helpless position of her aunt. The speediest way of summoning Mrs. Ellmother would be to ring the bell. As she touched the handle a faint cry of suffering from the bed called her back. "Oh, so thirsty!" murmured the failing voice "so thirsty!"
It was then the twenty-third of the month. In four days more the new master would be ready to enter on his duties; and Alban would be at liberty. On the twenty-fourth, Alban received a telegram which startled him. The person sending the message was Mrs. Ellmother; and the words were: "Meet me at your railway station to-day, at two o'clock."
Her next proceeding was to open her writing-desk, and look into the old account-book once more. While it lay open on her lap, she recalled what had passed that morning, between Mrs. Ellmother and herself. The old woman had been born and bred in the North, on an open moor. She had been removed to the keen air of Canada when she left her birthplace.
Had the desperate girl meditated throwing herself under the wheels of the engine? The thought had been in both their minds; but neither of them acknowledged it. Francine stepped quietly into the carriage, when the train drew up, and laid her head back in a corner, and closed her eyes. Mrs. Ellmother took her place in another compartment, and beckoned to Alban to speak to her at the window.
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