Villette

had once been silently presented to me by a stranger (a stranger to me, for we had never exchanged words), and which I had dried and kept for its sweet perfume between the folds of my best dress, lay there unstirred; my black silk scarf, my lace chemisettes and collars were unrumpled. Had she creased one solitary article, I own I should have felt much greater difficulty in forgiving her; but finding all straight and orderly, I said, »Let bygones be bygones. I am unharmed: why should I bear malice?«
     
    A thing there was which puzzled myself, and I sought in my brain a key to that riddle almost as sedulously as madame had sought a guide to useful knowledge in my toilet drawers. How was it that Dr. John, if he had not been accessory to the dropping of that casket into the garden, should have known that it
was
dropped, and appeared so promptly on the spot to seek it? So strong was the wish to clear up this point that I began to entertain this daring suggestion:
    »Why may I not, in case I should ever have the opportunity, ask Dr. John himself to explain this coincidence?«
    And so long as Dr. John was absent, I really believed I had courage to test him with such a question.
    Little Georgette was now convalescent; and her physician accordingly made his visits very rare: indeed, he would have ceased them altogether, had not madame insisted on his giving an occasional call till the child should be quite well.
    She came into the nursery one evening just after I had listened to Georgette's lisped and broken prayer, and had put her to bed. Taking the little one's hand, she said:
    »Cette enfant a toujours un peu de fièvre.« And presently afterwards, looking at me with a quicker glance than was habitual to her quiet eye, »Le Docteur John l'a-t-il vue dernièrement? Non, n'est ce pas?«
    Of course, she knew this better than any other person in the house. »Well,« she continued, »I am going out, pour faire quelques courses en fiacre. I shall call on Dr. John, and send him to the child. I will that he sees her this very evening; her cheeks are flushed, her pulse is quick:
you
will receive him – for my part, I shall be from home.«
    Now the child was well enough, only warm with the warmth of July; it was scarcely less needful to send for a priest to administer extreme unction than for a doctor to prescribe a dose; also madame rarely made ›courses‹ as she called them, in the evening: moreover, this was the first time she had chosen to absent herself on the occasion of a visit from Dr. John. The whole arrangement indicated some plan; this I saw, but without the least anxiety. »Ha! ha! madame,« laughed Light-heart the Beggar, »your crafty wits are on the wrong tack.«
    She departed, attired very smartly in a shawl of price, and a certain
chapeau vert tendre
– hazardous, as to its tint, for any complexion less fresh than her own, but, to her, not unbecoming. I wondered what she intended: whether she really would send Dr. John or not; or whether indeed he would come: he might be engaged.
    Madame had charged me not to let Georgette sleep till the doctor came; I had therefore sufficient occupation in telling her nursery tales and palavering the little language for her benefit. I affected Georgette; she was a sensitive and a loving child: to hold her in my lap, or carry her in my arms was to me a treat. To-night she would have me lay my head on the pillow of her crib; she even put her little arms round my neck. Her clasp and the nestling action with which she pressed her cheek to mine, made me almost cry with a tender pain. Feeling of no kind abounded in that house; this pure little drop from a pure little source was too sweet: it penetrated deep, and subdued the heart, and sent a gush to the eyes.
    Half an hour or an hour passed; Georgette murmured in her soft lisp that she was growing sleepy. »And you
shall
sleep,« thought I, »malgré maman and médecin, if they are not here in ten minutes.«
    Hark! There was the ring, and there the tread, astonishing the staircase by the fleetness with which it left the steps behind. Rosine introduced Dr. John, and, with a freedom of manner not altogether peculiar to herself, but characteristic of the domestics of Villette generally, she stayed to hear what he had to say. Madame's presence would have awed her back to her own realm of the vestibule and the cabinet – for mine, or that of any other teacher or pupil, she cared not a jot. Smart, trim and pert, she stood, a hand in