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

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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.




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