She was of the order of female likely to take a somewhat melodramatic view of any case offering her an opening in that direction.

“Jane!” she gasped faintly, “do you think they’d try to take her life?”

“Goodness, no!” ejaculated Jane, with even a trifle of impatience.  “People like them daren’t.  But suppose they was to try to, well, to upset her in some way, what a thing for them it would be.”

After which the two women talked together for some time in whispers, Jane bringing a chair to place opposite her mother’s.  They sat knee to knee, and now and then Jane shed a tear from pure nervousness.  She was so appalled by the fear of making a mistake which, being revealed by some chance, would bring confusion upon and pain of mind to her lady.

“At all events,” was Mrs. Cupp’s weighty observation when their conference was at an end, “here we both are, and two pairs of eyes and ears and hands and legs is a fat lot better than one, where there’s things to be looked out for.”

Her training in the matter of subtlety had not been such as Ameerah’s, and it may not be regarded as altogether improbable that her observation of the Ayah was at times not too adroitly concealed, but if the native woman knew that she was being remarked, she gave no sign of her knowledge.  She performed her duties faithfully and silently, she gave no trouble, and showed a gentle subservience and humbleness towards the white servants which won immense approbation.  Her manner towards Mrs. Cupp’s self was marked indeed by something like a tinge of awed deference, which, it must be confessed, mollified the good woman, and awakened in her a desire to be just and lenient even to the dark of skin and alien of birth.

“She knows her betters when she sees them, and has pretty enough manners for a black,” the object of her respectful obeisances remarked.  “I wonder if she’s ever heard of her Maker, and if a little brown Testament with good print wouldn’t be a good thing to give her?”

This boon was, in fact, bestowed upon her as a gift.  Mrs. Cupp bought it for a shilling at a small shop in the village.  Ameerah, in whose dusky being was incorporated the occult faith of lost centuries, and whose gods had been gods through mystic ages, received the fat, little brown book with down-dropped lids and grateful obeisance.  These were her words to her mistress: 

“The fat old woman with protruding eyes bestowed it upon me.  She says it is the book of her god.  She has but one.  She wishes me to worship him.  Am I a babe to worship such a god as would please her.  She is old, and has lost her mind.”

Lady Walderhurst’s health continued all that could be desired.  She arose smiling in the morning, and bore her smile about with her all day.  She walked much in the gardens, and spent long, happy hours sewing in her favourite sitting-room.  Work which she might have paid other women to do, she did with her own hands for the mere sentimental bliss of it.  Sometimes she sat with Hester and sewed, and Hester lay on a sofa and stared at her moving hands.