Free The Truant Spirit by Sara Seale Page B

which you met, she would permit for one moment that you should stay? No, my cabbage, Madame would never risk the influence of a man such as he on the very
    eve of your betrothal to another.”
    Sabina grinned. Sometimes, she thought, Marthe talked exactly like a penny dreadful.
    “You can make yourself easy,” she said. “It makes no difference to Mr. Brockman whether I stay or go—he told me so himself. As you’re always telling me, Marthe, I don’t charm strange men very readily.”
    “As for that,” Marthe retorted negligently, “it makes no matter if a man has the ennui —and what else would any man have staying in this house with its draughts and its graves and an imbecile boy and the so proper English chatelaine? You are young—you are promised to another—these things are sufficient when the hours are long and no other attractions offer.”
    “You’re hardly very flattering,” said Sabina, going a little pink.
    “No, because you are a fool and do not understand men as I do. That old maid in the next room is no better, for she suffers too from girlish dreams, and because she is too old she is willing that you shall amuse him for her.” Sabina looked at the woman with profound distaste. The flat, sallow face, and the hairs on the upper lip had always had a faint repulsion for her, but never before had she understood the native coarseness which was so near the surface.
    “You are disgusting,” she said with disdain. “I can’t conceive how Tante has put up with you all these years.”
    “Because,” said Marthe with contemptuous enjoyment, “I work for nothing when money is short, and because Madame knows well that she is not so very different herself. The veneer, oh yes, the chic, the grand manner when it suits, but Lucille Faivre was not so very different before she became Madame Lamb.”
    Sabina raised a hand as if she would strike her.
    “What are you suggesting?” she demanded. “You will speak with respect of my aunt, whatever your private feelings. It is not for you to excuse your own faults by blaming an employer who has kept you in comfort for years.”
    “Comfort!” Marthe spat, and Sabina’s eyes became cold.
    “Oh, yes, Marthe, even in the cheap hotels you saw to it that you had comfort. Only I went without,” she said.
    The woman lowered her eyes, and when she next spoke there was more civility in her voice.
    “You are growing up, mam’zelle,” she said. “Or is it that already M. Brockman’s influence shows? That is the way he talks—assuming the role of grand seigneur of which he knows nothing. And I—Marthe? Does Madame expect me to stay in this place, too?”
    “She didn’t mention you, as you saw for yourself. It would be better, I expect, if you returned to London.” “And expose you to a danger of which Madame knows nothing, and for which she would never forgive me? Oh, no, mam’zelle, not before I receive a reply to my own letter; for, look you, I have explained to Madame circumstances which that other one did not see fit to mention.”
    “You are very much afraid for your pickings, aren’t you?” Sabina said, surprised by her own perspicacity.
    “Pickings?”
    “What you, as well as Tante, hope to make out of my marriage.”
    “Now, my cabbage, you are talking nonsense.” Marthe was suddenly ingratiating, as Sabina had often known her be with Tante. “It is of you we think and your future—”
    “And M. Bergerac of his house.”
    “He has a right to it, mam’zelle—you could not afford to live in one corner of it by yourself.”
    Sabina felt suddenly tired and her pleasure in the day’s happenings was utterly quenched. It was very likely, she thought, that when Tante had read Marthe’s interpretation of the situation, a telegram would follow immediately cancelling her letter.
    “You must do as you think fit,” she said wearily. “Until I hear differently from Tante I shall remain where I am.”
    “You will hear, my child—you will hear