Stray Pearls

sobbing and calling for her mother, to the carriage, and explained the state of affairs as well as I could while trying to hush her. Annora was quick to understand, and not slow to approve. 'The brutes!' she said. 'Have they abandoned them? Yes, Meg, you are safe, and you cannot help staying. Give me the poor child! I will do my best for her. O yes! I will take care of Eustace, and I'll send you your clothes. I wish it was any one else, but he will be glad. So adieu, and take care of yourself! Come, little one, do not be afraid. We are going to see a kind gentleman.'

But as poor little Emilia knew no English, this must have failed to console her, and they drove away amid her sobs and cries, while I returned to my strange task. I was not altogether cut off from home, for my faithful Nicolas, though uncertain whether he had been secured from the contagion, declared that where his mistress went he went. Tryphena would have come too, but like a true old nurse she had no confidence in Mistress Nan's care of my brother, or of the child, and it was far better as it was, for the old women whom the doctor found for us were good for nothing but to drink and to sleep; whereas Nicolas, like a true French laquais, had infinite resources in time of need. He was poor Madame's only assistant in the terrible nursing of her husband; he made the most excellent tisanes and bouillons for the patients, and kept us nurses constantly supported with good meats and wines, without which we never could have gone through the fatigue; he was always at hand, and seemed to sleep, if he slept at all, with one ear and one eye open during that terrible fifteen days during which neither Madame van Hunker, he, nor I, ever took off our clothes. Moreover, he managed our communication with my family. Every day in early morning he carried a billet from me which he placed in a pan of vinegar at their door; and, at his whistle, Annora looked out and threw down a billet for me, which, to my joy and comfort, generally told me that my brother was no worse, and that the little maid was quite well, and a great amusement to him. He was the only one who could speak any Dutch, so that he had been able to do more with her than the others at her first arrival; and though she very soon picked up English enough to understand everything, and to make herself understood in a droll, broken baby tongue, she continued to be devoted to him. She was a pretty, fair child of three years old, with enough of Dutch serenity and gravity not to be troublesome after the first shock was over, and she beguiled many of his weary hours of confinement by the games in which he joined her. He sent out to by for her a jointed baby, which Annora dressed for her, and, as she wrote, my lord was as much interested about the Lady Belphoebe's robes (for so had he named her) as was Emilia, and he was her most devoted knight, daily contriving fresh feasts and pageants for her ladyship. Nan declared that she was sometimes quite jealous of Belphoebe and her little mistress; but, on the whole, I think she enjoyed the months when she had Eustace practically to herself.

For we were separated for months. Poor Cornelia's illness was very short, the chill taken at the sleighing party had been fatal to her at the beginning of the complaint, and she expired on the third day, with hardly any interval of consciousness.

Her sister, Veronica, was my chief charge. I had to keep her constantly rolled in red cloth in a dark room, while the fever ran very high, and she suffered much. I think she was too ill to feel greatly the discomfort of being tended by a person who could not speak her language, and indeed necessity enabled me to understand a tongue so much like English, which indeed she could herself readily speak when her brain began to clear. This, however, was not for full a fortnight, and in the meantime Mynheer van Hunker was growing worse and worse, and he died on the sixteenth day of his illness. His wife had watched over him day and night with unspeakable tenderness and devotion, though I fear he never showed her much gratitude in return; he had been too much used to think of woman as mere housewifely slaves.

She had called me in to help in her terror at the last symptoms of approaching death, and I heard him mutter to her: 'Thou hast come to be a tolerable housewife. I have taken care thou dost not lavish all on beggarly stranger.'

At least so the words came back on me afterwards; but we were absorbed in our attendance on him in his extremity, and when death had come at last I had to lead her away drooping and utterly spent. Alas! it was not exhaustion alone, she had imbibed the dreadful disease, and for another three weeks she hung between life and death. Her stepdaughter left her bed, and was sent away to the country-house to recover, under the care of the steward's wife, before Millicent could open her eyes or lift her head from her pillow; but she did at last begin to revive, and it was in those days of slow convalescence that she and I became very dear to one another.

We could talk together of home, as she loved to call England, and of her little daughter, of whom Annora sent me daily reports, which drew out the mother's smiles. She could not be broken-hearted for Mynheer van Hunker, nor did she profess so to be, but she said he had been kind to her-much kinder since she had really tried to please him; and that, she said-and then broke off-was after he-your brother-my lord-- And she went no further, but I knew well afterwards what that chance meeting had done for her-that meeting which, with such men as I had too often seen at Paris, might have been fatal for ever to her peace of mind and purity of conscience by renewing vain regrets, not to be indulged without a stain. Nay, it had instead given her a new impulse, set her in the way of peace, and helped her to turn with new effort to the path of duty that was left to her. And she had grown far happier therein. Her husband had been kinder to her after she ceased to vex him by a piteous submission and demonstrative resignation; his child had been given to brighten her with hope; and that she had gained his daughter's affection I had found by Veronica's conversation about her, and her tears when permitted to see her-or rather to enter her dark chamber for a few moments before going to Hunkerslust, the name of the country-house near Delf. Those days of darkness, when the fever had spent itself, and the strength was slowly returning, were indeed a time when hearts could flow into one another; and certainly I had never found any friend who so perfectly and entirely suited me as that sweet Millicent. There was perhaps a lack of strength of resolute will; she had not the robust temper of my high-spirited Annora, but, on the other hand, she was not a mere blindly patient Grisel, like my poor sister-in-law, Cecily d'Aubepine, but could think and resolve for herself, and hold staunchly to her duty when she saw it, whatever it might cost her; nor did terror make her hide anything, and thus she had won old Hunker's trust, and he had even permitted her to attend the service of exiled English ministers at the Hague.

One of them came to see her two or three times-once when she seemed to be at the point of death, and twice afterwards, reading prayers with her, to her great comfort. He spoke of her as an angel of goodness, spending all the means allowed her by her husband among her poor exiled countrymen and women. And as she used no concealment, and only took what was supplied to her for her own 'menus plaisirs ,' her husband might grumble, but did not forbid. I knew now that my brother had loved in her something more than the lovely face.

And oh for that beauty! I felt as though I were trying to guard a treasure for him as I used every means I had heard of to save it from disfigurement, not permitting one ray of daylight to penetrate into the room, and attempting whatever could prevent the marks from remaining. And here Millicent's habits of patience and self-command came to her aid, and Dr. Dirkius said he had never had a better or a gentler sick person to deal with.

Alas! it was all in vain. Millicent's beauty had been of that delicate fragile description to which smallpox is the most fatal enemy, with its tendency not only to thicken the complexion, but to destroy the refined form of the features. We were prepared for the dreadful redness at first, and when Millicent first beheld herself in the glass she contrived to laugh, while she wondered what her little Emilia would say to her changed appearance, and also adding that she wondered how it fared with her step-mother, a more important question, she tried to say, than for herself, for the young lady was betrothed to a rich merchant's son, and would be married as soon as the days of mourning were over. However, as Veronica had never been reckoned a beauty, and les beaux yeux de sa cassette had been avowedly the attraction, we hoped that however it might be, there would not be much difference in her lot.

We were to joint her at Hunkerslust to rid ourselves of infection, while the house was purified from it. Before we went, Annora daily brought little Emilia before the window that her mother might see the little creature, who looked so grown and so full of health as to rejoice our hearts. My brother and sister seemed to have made the little maid much more animated than suited a Dutch child, for she skipped, frolicked, and held up her wooden baby, making joyous gestures in a way that astonished the solemn streets of Graavehage, as the inhabitants call it. She was to come to us at Hunkerslust so soon as the purification was complete; and then I was to go back to my brother and sister, for as the spring advanced it was needful that we should return to France, to our mother and my son.

It was April by the time Madame van Hunker was fit to move, and the great coach came to the door to carry us out the three or four miles into the country. I shall never forget the charm of leaving the pest-house I had inhabited so long, and driving through the avenues, all budding with fresh young foliage, and past gardens glowing with the gayest of flowers, the canals making shining mirrors for tree, windmill, bridge, and house, the broad smooth roads,