Jezebel's Daughter by Wilkie Collins
page 69 of 384 (17%)
page 69 of 384 (17%)
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My first impulse was to find an excuse for declining the invitation.
There was something in the air of mystery with which Madame Fontaine performed her domestic duties that was not at all to my taste. But Minna pleaded with me to say Yes. "Do stay with us a little longer," she said, in her innocently frank way, "we have so few pleasures in this place." I might, perhaps, have even resisted Minna--but her mother literally laid hands on me. She seated herself, with the air of an empress, on a shabby little sofa in the corner of the room, and beckoning me to take my place by her side, laid her cool firm hand persuasively on mine. Her touch filled me with a strange sense of disturbance, half pleasurable, half painful--I don't know how to describe it. Let me only record that I yielded, and that Minna left us together. "I want to tell you the whole truth," said Madame Fontaine, as soon as we were alone; "and I can only do so in the absence of my daughter. You must have seen for yourself that we are very poor?" Her hand pressed mine gently. I answered as delicately as I could--I said I was sorry, but not surprised, to hear it. "When you kindly helped Minna to get that letter yesterday," she went on, "you were the innocent means of inflicting a disappointment on me--one disappointment more, after others that had gone before it. I came here to place my case before some wealthy relatives of mine in this city. They refused to assist me. I wrote next to other members of my family, living in Brussels. The letter of yesterday contained their answer. Another refusal! The landlady of this house is an afflicted creature, with every claim on my sympathies; she, too, is struggling with poverty. If I failed to pay her, it would be too cruel. Only yesterday I felt it my hard duty to give her notice of our departure in a week more. I have just written |
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