’Wat fool you were! so disobedient and obstinate; if you ’ad done wat I say, then we should av been quaite safe; those persons they were tipsy, and there is nothing so dangerous as to quarrel with tipsy persons; I would ’av brought you quaite safe—­the lady she seem so nice and quaite, and we should ’av been safe with her—­there would ’av been nothing absolutely; but instead you would scream and pooshe, and so they grow quite wild, and all the impertinence and violence follow of course; and that a poor Bill—­all his beating and danger to his life it is cause entairely by you.’

And she spoke with more real virulence than that kind of upbraiding generally exhibits.

‘The beast!’ exclaimed Mrs. Rusk, when she, I, and Mary Quince were in my room together, ’with all her crying and praying, I’d like to know as much as she does, maybe, about them rascals.  There never was sich like about the place, long as I remember it, till she came to Knowl, old witch! with them unmerciful big bones of hers, and her great bald head, grinning here, and crying there, and her nose everywhere.  The old French hypocrite!’

Mary Quince threw in an observation, and I believe Mrs. Rusk rejoined, but I heard neither.  For whether the housekeeper spoke with reflection or not, what she said affected me strangely.  Through the smallest aperture, for a moment, I had had a peep into Pandemonium.  Were not peculiarities of Madame’s demeanour and advice during the adventure partly accounted for by the suggestion?  Could the proposed excursion to Church Scarsdale have had any purpose of the same sort?  What was proposed?  How was Madame interested in it?  Were such immeasurable treason and hypocrisy possible?  I could not explain nor quite believe in the shapeless suspicion that with these light and bitter words of the old housekeeper had stolen so horribly into my mind.

After Mrs. Rusk was gone I awoke from my dismal abstraction with something like a moan and a shudder, with a dreadful sense of danger.

‘Oh!  Mary Quince,’ I cried, ‘do you think she really knew?’

‘Who, Miss Maud?’

’Do you think Madame knew of those dreadful people?  Oh, no—­say you don’t—­you don’t believe it—­tell me she did not.  I’m distracted, Mary Quince, I’m frightened out of my life.’

’There now, Miss Maud, dear—­there now, don’t take on so—­why should she?—­no sich a thing.  Mrs. Rusk, law bless you, she’s no more meaning in what she says than the child unborn.’

But I was really frightened.  I was in a horrible state of uncertainty as to Madame de la Rougierre’s complicity with the party who had beset us at the warren, and afterwards so murderously beat our poor gamekeeper.  How was I ever to get rid of that horrible woman?  How long was she to enjoy her continual opportunities of affrighting and injuring me?

’She hates me—­she hates me, Mary Quince; and she will never stop until she has done me some dreadful injury.  Oh! will no one relieve me—­will no one take her away?  Oh, papa, papa, papa! you will be sorry when it is too late.’