“Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day she was back with me with the remark that Mlle. Therese knew her way about very well already and preferred to be left to herself. Some little time afterwards I went to see that sister of mine. The first thing she said to me, ‘I wouldn’t have recognized you, Rita,’ and I said, ‘What a funny dress you have, Therese, more fit for the portress of a convent than for this house.’—‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and unless you give this house to me, Rita, I will go back to our country. I will have nothing to do with your life, Rita. Your life is no secret for me.’
“I was going from room to room and Therese was following me. ‘I don’t know that my life is a secret to anybody,’ I said to her, ‘but how do you know anything about it?’ And then she told me that it was through a cousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you know. He had finished his schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish commercial house of some kind, in Paris, and apparently had made it his business to write home whatever he could hear about me or ferret out from those relations of mine with whom I lived as a girl. I got suddenly very furious. I raged up and down the room (we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from me as far as the door. I heard her say to herself, ‘It’s the evil spirit in her that makes her like this.’ She was absolutely convinced of that. She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect herself. I was quite astounded. And then I really couldn’t help myself. I burst into a laugh. I laughed and laughed; I really couldn’t stop till Therese ran away. I went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall with her face to the wall and her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner. I had to pull her out by the shoulders from there. I don’t think she was frightened; she was only shocked. But I don’t suppose her heart is desperately bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tired she came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my waist and entreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of saints and priests. Quite a little programme for a reformed sinner. I got away at last. I left her sunk on her heels before the empty chair looking after me. ‘I pray for you every night and morning, Rita,’ she said.—‘Oh, yes. I know you are a good sister,’ I said to her. I was letting myself out when she called after me, ‘And what about this house, Rita?’ I said to her, ‘Oh, you may keep it till the day I reform and enter a convent.’ The last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me with her mouth open. I have seen her since several times, but our intercourse is, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with some great lady. But I believe she really knows how to make men comfortable. Upon my word I think she likes to look after men. They don’t seem to be such great sinners as women are. I think you could do worse than take up your quarters at number 10. She will no doubt develop a saintly sort of affection for you, too.”