Rachel, sitting on the arm of her grandfather's chair, regarded the housekeeper coldly. "Why can't you go back in the meat-market with your cousin?" she asked; "grandfather says you used to be there."
"Yes, but his son's growed up now and he don't need me," and Nora began to turn a corner of her apron over one stodgy finger. "It was jest as my friends warned me," she whimpered, "they said I'd be sorry if I stayed on here after yer mother died. I've sacrificed everything for ye two and ye don't seem to know it." She ended with a guttural sob.
Rachel scanned her with a swift glance from head to foot. "What have you sacrificed for us?" she asked. "Haven't you been paid?"
"Yes, but there's some things that can't be paid for," Nora muttered. "A woman can't stay in a man's house the way I have without its costing her dear."
The girl stared, then the clear colour stained her face. "Nonsense!" she cried.
"It may seem nonsense to you, miss," Nora retorted, "I can well understand that it do--actin' as you did awhile back. But it ain't nonsense to the world. I might as well be like that poor thing at the lighthouse 'stead of the decent woman I am, as far as the world knows. I've give up everything for ye two, that's what I have, and this is the way I git treated," and she began sobbing in earnest.
The old man gazed from one to the other in bewilderment. He saw his granddaughter rise and heard her draw a sharp breath, and he saw the housekeeper cower and drop her eyes.
Rachel passed to a window and stood there for some seconds; then a whiff of cookery from the kitchen stirred in her a kind of pity. Through a crack of the door was revealed that for which Nora struggled and schemed. To have food in plenty, greasy, rich food, this was the one desire of Nora's life.
"Grandfather," she said softly and a little wearily, without looking at the woman, "if you are willing, we'll take Nora with us."
Of all this interesting parley which betrayed itself in the late-burning lamp at the Beckett house, André Garins caught not an inkling. He slept above in the lighthouse, or, when chance favoured, below in his bed; and cut off as he was from news, he remained ignorant of the proposed flight.
Occasionally, after he had polished the crystal lenses and the brass trimmings of the lantern, his duties over for the day, he tapped at the Beckett door; but Rachel was too busy to see him: and to escape the belligerent eyes of Captain Daniels who drank secretly but heavily as the cold weather came on, he betook himself to the deserted barn.