On the seventeenth, to all appearance, the cloud passed away again. They
returned to their decorating work on the door, and seemed to be as good
friends as ever. If Penelope was to be believed, Mr. Franklin had seized
the opportunity of the reconciliation to make an offer to Miss Rachel,
and had neither been accepted nor refused. My girl was sure (from signs
and tokens which I need not trouble you with) that her young mistress
had fought Mr. Franklin off by declining to believe that he was in
earnest, and had then secretly regretted treating him in that way
afterwards. Though Penelope was admitted to more familiarity with her
young mistress than maids generally are--for the two had been almost
brought up together as children--still I knew Miss Rachel's reserved
character too well to believe that she would show her mind to anybody in
this way. What my daughter told me, on the present occasion, was, as I
suspected, more what she wished than what she really knew.
On the nineteenth another event happened. We had the doctor in the house
professionally. He was summoned to prescribe for a person whom I have
had occasion to present to you in these pages--our second housemaid,
Rosanna Spearman.
This poor girl--who had puzzled me, as you know already, at the
Shivering Sand--puzzled me more than once again, in the interval time of
which I am now writing. Penelope's notion that her fellow-servant was in
love with Mr. Franklin (which my daughter, by my orders, kept strictly
secret) seemed to be just as absurd as ever. But I must own that what
I myself saw, and what my daughter saw also, of our second housemaid's
conduct, began to look mysterious, to say the least of it.
For example, the girl constantly put herself in Mr. Franklin's way--very
slyly and quietly, but she did it. He took about as much notice of her
as he took of the cat; it never seemed to occur to him to waste a look
on Rosanna's plain face. The poor thing's appetite, never much, fell
away dreadfully; and her eyes in the morning showed plain signs of
waking and crying at night. One day Penelope made an awkward discovery,
which we hushed up on the spot. She caught Rosanna at Mr. Franklin's
dressing-table, secretly removing a rose which Miss Rachel had given him
to wear in his button-hole, and putting another rose like it, of her own
picking, in its place. She was, after that, once or twice impudent
to me, when I gave her a well-meant general hint to be careful in her
conduct; and, worse still, she was not over-respectful now, on the few
occasions when Miss Rachel accidentally spoke to her.
My lady noticed the change, and asked me what I thought about it. I
tried to screen the girl by answering that I thought she was out of
health; and it ended in the doctor being sent for, as already mentioned,
on the nineteenth. He said it was her nerves, and doubted if she was fit
for service. My lady offered to remove her for change of air to one of
our farms, inland. She begged and prayed, with the tears in her eyes, to
be let to stop; and, in an evil hour, I advised my lady to try her for
a little longer. As the event proved, and as you will soon see, this
was the worst advice I could have given. If I could only have looked a
little way into the future, I would have taken Rosanna Spearman out of
the house, then and there, with my own hand.