“Do you mind the damp?” asked the girl, anxiously.

“No, not at all; but—­”

“You don’t know what it is never to feel free, but be like a French girl, always watched—­at least whenever I am with any one I care to speak to.”

“Are you quite sure it is not imagination?”

“O, Joanna, don’t be like all the rest, blinded by her!  You knew her always!”

“Only from below.  I am four years younger; you know dear Emily was my contemporary.”

“Dear Emily!  I miss her more now than even at Rockpier.  But you, who were her friend, and knew Camilla of old, I know you can help me as no one else can.”

Jenny returned a caress; and Eleonora spoke on.  “You know I was only eight years old when Camilla married, and I had scarcely seen her till she came to us at Rockpier, on Lord Tyrrell’s death, and then she was most delightful.  I thought her like mother and sister both in one, even more tender than dear Emily.  How could I have thought so for a moment?  But she enchanted everybody.  Clergy, ladies, and all came under the spell; and I can’t get advice from any of them—­even from Miss Coles—­you remember her?”

“Your governess?  How nice she was!”

“Emily and I owed everything to her!  She was as near being a mother to us as any one could be; and Camilla could not say enough of gratitude, or show esteem enough, and fascinated her like all the rest of us; but she never rested till she had got her off to a situation in Russia.  I did not perceive the game at the time, but I see now how all the proposals for situations within reach of me were quashed.”

“But you write to her?”

“Yes; but as soon as I showed any of my troubles she reproved me for self-will and wanting to judge for myself, and not submit to my sister.  That’s the way with all at Rockpier.  Camilla has gone about pitying me to them for having to give way to my married sister, but saying it was quite time that she took charge of us; and on that notion they all wrote to me.  Then she persuaded papa to go abroad; and I was delighted, little thinking she never meant me to go back again.”

“Did she not?”

“Listen!  I’ve heard her praise Rockpier and its church to the skies to one person—­say Mr. Bindon.  To another, such as our own Vicar, she says it was much too ultra, and she likes moderation; she tells your father that she wants to see papa among his old friends; and to Mrs. Duncombe, I’ve heard her go as near the truth as is possible to her, and call it a wearisome place, with an atmosphere of incense, curates, and old maids, from whom she had carried me off before I grew fit for nothing else!”

“I dare say all these are true in turn, or seem so to her, or she would not say them before you.”

“She has left off trying to gloss it over with me, except so far as it is part of her nature.  She did at first, but she knows it is of no use now.”