I Say No | Page 7

some danger of communicating itself to Francine. Her large mouth opened luxuriously in a long-continued yawn.
"Good-night!" said Emily.
Miss de Sor became wide awake in an instant.
"No," she said positively; "you are quite mistaken if you think I am going to sleep. Please exert yourself, Miss Emily--I am waiting to be interested."
Emily appeared to be unwilling to exert herself. She preferred talking of the weather.
"Isn't the wind rising?" she said.
There could be no doubt of it. The leaves in the garden were beginning to rustle, and the pattering of the rain sounded on the windows.
Francine (as her straight chin proclaimed to all students of physiognomy) was an obstinate girl. Determined to carry her point she tried Emily's own system on Emily herself--she put questions.
"Have you been long at this school?"
"More than three years."
"Have you got any brothers and sisters?"
"I am the only child."
"Are your father and mother alive?"
Emily suddenly raised herself in bed.
"Wait a minute," she said; "I think I hear it again."
"The creaking on the stairs?"
"Yes."
Either she was mistaken, or the change for the worse in the weather made it not easy to hear slight noises in the house. The wind was still rising. The passage of it through the great trees in the garden began to sound like the fall of waves on a distant beach. It drove the rain--a heavy downpour by this time--rattling against the windows.
"Almost a storm, isn't it?" Emily said
Francine's last question had not been answered yet. She took the earliest opportunity of repeating it:
"Never mind the weather," she said. "Tell me about your father and mother. Are they both alive?"
Emily's reply only related to one of her parents.
"My mother died before I was old enough to feel my loss."
"And your father?"
Emily referred to another relative--her father's sister. "Since I have grown up," she proceeded, "my good aunt has been a second mother to me. My story is, in one respect, the reverse of yours. You are unexpectedly rich; and I am unexpectedly poor. My aunt's fortune was to have been my fortune, if I outlived her. She has been ruined by the failure of a bank. In her old age, she must live on an income of two hundred a year--and I must get my own living when I leave school."
"Surely your father can help you?" Francine persisted.
"His property is landed property." Her voice faltered, as she referred to him, even in that indirect manner. "It is entailed; his nearest male relative inherits it."
The delicacy which is easily discouraged was not one of the weaknesses in the nature of Francine.
"Do I understand that your father is dead?" she asked.
Our thick-skinned fellow-creatures have the rest of us at their mercy: only give them time, and they carry their point in the end. In sad subdued tones--telling of deeply-rooted reserves of feeling, seldom revealed to strangers--Emily yielded at last.
"Yes," she said, "my father is dead."
"Long ago?"
"Some people might think it long ago. I was very fond of my father. It's nearly four years since he died, and my heart still aches when I think of him. I'm not easily depressed by troubles, Miss de Sor. But his death was sudden--he was in his grave when I first heard of it--and-- Oh, he was so good to me; he was so good to me!"
The gay high-spirited little creature who took the lead among them all--who was the life and soul of the school--hid her face in her hands, and burst out crying.
Startled and--to do her justice--ashamed, Francine attempted to make excuses. Emily's generous nature passed over the cruel persistency that had tortured her. "No no; I have nothing to forgive. It isn't your fault. Other girls have not mothers and brothers and sisters--and get reconciled to such a loss as mine. Don't make excuses."
"Yes, but I want you to know that I feel for you," Francine insisted, without the slightest approach to sympathy in face, voice, or manner. "When my uncle died, and left us all the money, papa was much shocked. He trusted to time to help him."
"Time has been long about it with me, Francine. I am afraid there is something perverse in my nature; the hope of meeting again in a better world seems so faint and so far away. No more of it now! Let us talk of that good creature who is asleep on the other side of you. Did I tell you that I must earn my own bread when I leave school? Well, Cecilia has written home and found an employment for me. Not a situation as governess--something quite out of the common way. You shall hear all about it."
In the brief interval that had passed, the weather had begun to change again. The wind was as high as ever; but to judge by the lessening patter on the windows