"Yes, yes, I see it all: Heaven is helping me," mentally spoke poor Charlotte Guise, as she took up her post by Marie after the doctor's departure, and revolved matters in her mind. "This illness has been sent on purpose: a token to me that I have done right to come to Greylands, and that I am to stay in it. And by the good help of Heaven I will stay, until I shall have tracked home the fate of my husband to Mr. Castlemaine."
The illness of little Marie Guise lasted several days. Sitting by her bed--as she did for hours together--Madame Guise had time, and to spare, to lay out her plans. That is, as far as she could lay them out. Her sole object in life now--save and except the child--was to search out the mystery of her husband's fate; her one hope to bring home the crime to Mr. Castlemaine. How to set about it she knew not. She would have to account in some plausible manner for her prolonged stay at Greylands, and to conceal her real identity. Above all, she must take care never to betray interest in the fate of Anthony Castlemaine.
To stay in Greylands, or in England at all, might be rather difficult, unless she could get some employment to eke out her means. She knew perfectly well that without her husband's signature, the cautious French bankers and men of business who held his property in their hands, would not advance much, if any, of it to her, unless proofs were forthcoming of his death. She possessed a little income of her own: it was available, and she must concert ways and means of its being transmitted to her in secret, without Greylands learning who she was, and what she was. This might be done: but the money would not be enough to support her and her child comfortably as gentlewomen.
"I think I should like to make a sojourn here in Greylands," she observed to M. Bent, cautiously opening the subject, on the first day that Marie could be pronounced convalescent, and was taken down in the parlour for a change.
"Why! should you, ma'am!" returned the landlady briskly. "Well, it's a nice place."
"I like the sea--and I should wish my little one to remain quiet now. I have suffered too much anxiety on her account to take her travelling again just yet."
"Sweet little thing!" aspirated Mrs. Bent. "Her pretty rosy colour is beginning to come back to her cheeks again. I've never seen a child with a brighter."