“Now we have to discover the merit that lit the path for you to here.”
“Will you not put on your glasses? It will be hard to find.”
“How long did you say you prayed to the Serpent for the gift of speech?”
“Over two years; and the prayer was answered in a different way from what I thought.”
“By the way, you spoke a little time ago of Mariana. Who was she?”
“A kind of waiting-maid at Marble House. I do not know what else she could be called, unless a sewing-maid. But she was beautiful, and different altogether from any sewing-maid that I had ever seen. And even in a week I grew to love her, for underneath a cold and smooth exterior she had the sweetest, kindest disposition of anyone I ever knew.”
“Did she derive much happiness from living there?”
“None, except two hours every Wednesday night. And then she played upon a violin. I never heard such music, though it was weirdly sad. But Mr. Barringcourt blinded my reason to believe there was no harmony in what she played.”
“You do not give him an enviable character.”
“That is what I said when Mariana told me of him.” And suddenly Rosalie shuddered. “How can I give him an enviable character when he was cruel, hard as marble, and vindictive. He was bad, really bad, and the worst thing is I knew it all the time, yet had he been agreeable to me, really agreeable, I would have shut my eyes to everything.”
And from a very real feeling of shame, her colour deepened, for Rosalie was not one of those people who are blind to their own shortcomings and weaknesses.
Then suddenly turning to her host, she said, changing the conversation:
“What must I call you? Everybody has a name, but yours I never heard.”
“Well,” he answered slowly, “I don’t know that for the present I have any name worth going by. Some call me the Traveller’s Friend, some the Physician, some the Task Master. You may call me what you will for the present. Hereafter we may find a better name.”
“Well, Mr. Barringcourt was called the Master. Suppose I call you the Governor, without any abbreviation to a lesser name.”
“Because Mariana told me I was weak, and weak people want someone very strict with them, and I should like to have a good understanding, you know, because I’m very ignorant.”