"You are thinking me very idle," she said to Madame Guise in a light tone of half apology for being caught with her hands before her. "But the truth is, I am feeling very tired this evening; unequal to work. I had a sleepless night, and got up with headache this morning."
"I too, had a sleepless night," said Madame Guise, forgetting caution in the sympathy of the moment. "Troubles were tormenting me."
"What troubles have you?" asked Mary Ursula in a kind, gentle tone. "You are satisfied with the care the Sisters give your little one?"
"Oh quite; quite. I am sure she is happy here."
"And you have told me that she and you are alone in the world."
Madame Guise untied her bonnet, and laid it on the chair beside her, before replying.
"Most of us have our troubles in one shape or another, I expect; sometimes they are of a nature that we do not care to speak of. It is that thing that the English call a skeleton in a closet. But--pardon me, Miss Castlemaine--you and I are both young to have already found the skeleton."
"True," said Mary Ursula: and for a moment she was silent from delicacy, intending to drop the subject. But her considerate goodness of heart induced her to speak at again.
"You are a lonely exile here, Madame: the land and its people are alike strange to you. If you have any source of trouble or care that it would be a comfort to you to share with another, or that I could in any way help to alleviate, impart it to me. You shall find me a true friend."
Just for one delusive instant, the impulse to take this grand and sweet and kindly lady into her confidence; to say to her I am trying to trace out my poor husband's fate; swayed Charlotte Guise. The next, she remembered that it must not be; that she was Miss Castlemaine, the niece of that great enemy.
"You are only too good and kind," she rejoined in a sad, faint tone. "I wish I could; I should ask nothing better: but there are some of our burthens we must bear alone."
"Are you quite comfortable at Greylands' Rest?" asked Mary Ursula, unable to repress the suspicion that Mrs. Castlemaine's temper or her young daughter's insolence might be rendering the governess's place a trying one.
"Yes--pretty well. That is, I should be," she hastily added, speaking on the impulse of the moment, "if I were quite sure the house was an honest one."