Part 18 (1/2)

”Why do you want to know it?” Lady Loring asked. ”You are not going to write to Romayne yourself?”

”I am going to think, before I do anything. If you can't trust my discretion, Adelaide, you have only to say so!”

It was spoken sharply. Lady Loring's reply betrayed a certain loss of temper on her side. ”Manage your own affairs, Stella--I have done meddling with them.” Her unlucky visit to Romayne at the hotel had been a subject of dispute between the two friends--and this referred to it.

”You shall have the address,” my lady added in her grandest manner. She wrote it on a piece of paper, and left the room.

Easily irritated, Lady Loring had the merit of being easily appeased.

That meanest of all vices, the vice of sulkiness, had no existence in her nature. In five minutes she regretted her little outburst of irritability. For five minutes more she waited, on the chance that Stella might be the first to seek a reconciliation. The interval pa.s.sed, and nothing happened. ”Have I really offended her?” Lady Loring asked herself. The next moment she was on her way back to Stella. The room was empty. She rang the bell for the maid.

”Where is Miss Eyrecourt?”

”Gone out, my lady.”

”Did she leave no message?”

”No, my lady. She went away in a great hurry.”

Lady Loring at once drew the conclusion that Stella had rashly taken the affair of the General's family into her own hands. Was it possible to say how this most imprudent proceeding might end? After hesitating and reflecting, and hesitating again, Lady Loring's anxiety got beyond her control. She not only decided on following Stella, but, in the excess of her nervous apprehension, she took one of the men-servants with her, in case of emergency!

CHAPTER XII.

THE GENERAL'S FAMILY.

NOT always remarkable for arriving at just conclusions, Lady Loring had drawn the right inference this time. Stella had stopped the first cab that pa.s.sed her, and had directed the driver to Camp's Hill, Islington.

The aspect of the miserable little street, closed at one end, and swarming with dirty children quarreling over their play, daunted her for the moment. Even the cabman, drawing up at the entrance to the street, expressed his opinion that it was a queer sort of place for a young lady to venture into alone. Stella thought of Romayne. Her firm persuasion that she was helping him to perform an act of mercy, which was (to his mind) an act of atonement as well, roused her courage. She boldly approached the open door of No. 10, and knocked on it with her parasol.

The tangled gray hair and grimy face of a hideous old woman showed themselves slowly at the end of the pa.s.sage, rising from the strong-smelling obscurity of the kitchen regions. ”What do you want?”

said the half-seen witch of the London slums. ”Does Madame Marillac live here?” Stella asked. ”Do you mean the foreigner?” ”Yes.” ”Second door.”

With those instructions the upper half of the witch sank and vanished.

Stella gathered her skirts together, and ascended a filthy flight of stairs for the first time in her life.

Coa.r.s.e voices, shameless language, gross laughter behind the closed doors of the first floor hurried her on her way to the rooms on the higher flight. Here there was a change for the better--here, at least, there was silence. She knocked at the door on the landing of the second floor. A gentle voice answered, in French; ”Entrez!”--then quickly subst.i.tuted the English equivalent, ”Come in!” Stella opened the door.

The wretchedly furnished room was scrupulously clean. Above the truckle-bed, a cheap little image of the Virgin was fastened to the wall, with some faded artificial flowers arranged above it in the form of a wreath. Two women, in dresses of coa.r.s.e black stuff, sat at a small round table, working at the same piece of embroidery. The elder of the two rose when the visitor entered the room. Her worn and weary face still showed the remains of beauty in its finely proportioned parts--her dim eyes rested on Stella with an expression of piteous entreaty. ”Have you come for the work, madam?” she asked, in English, spoken with a strong foreign accent. ”Pray forgive me; I have not finished it yet.”

The second of the two workwomen suddenly looked up.

She, too, was wan and frail; but her eyes were bright; her movements still preserved the elasticity of youth. Her likeness to the elder woman proclaimed their relations.h.i.+p, even before she spoke. ”Ah! it's my fault!” she burst out pa.s.sionately in French. ”I was hungry and tired, and I slept hours longer than I ought. My mother was too kind to wake me and set me to work. I am a selfish wretch--and my mother is an angel!”

She dashed away the tears gathering in her eyes, and proudly, fiercely, resumed her work.

Stella hastened to rea.s.sure them, the moment she could make herself heard. ”Indeed, I have nothing to do with the work,” she said, speaking in French, so that they might the more readily understand her. ”I came here, Madame Marillac--if you will not be offended with me, for plainly owning it--to offer you some little help.”

”Charity?” asked the daughter, looking up again sternly from her needle.

”Sympathy,” Stella answered gently.