Although she was still Nou-Nou’s little pet and was constantly in her company, she would often sneak away to me and she began to confide in me in an astonishing way. Nou-Nou was a little jealous at first but she realized that her relationship with her darling was very different from mine and so devoted was she to Ursule that she was ready to accept anything that gave her pleasure.
“I had a flair for clothes not making them … we had the seamstresses for that … but adding little touches to them, making suggestions which could lift a dress out of the commonplace. Ursule would have me with her when the seamstresses were fitting her. We used to go into the town together to make purchases, for she would insist that I accompany her.
“That was not all. She often asked my advice although she rarely took it. We became fast friends in a way which was not usual between a servant and the daughter of the house.
“The Brousseau parents, as I said, were indulgent. Yvette is a good girl, they used to say. She looks after Ursule as Nou-Nou couldn’t.
And so we grew together like two sisters. “
“And that was the greatest friendship of your life. What made you leave?”
“I offended the Comte. I told Ursule that she should stand up to him and criticized him to his face. He said that Marguerite no longer needed a nurse for I was looking after her at that time. And he seat me away.”
“I wonder Ursule allowed it.”
Yvette’s lips curled.
“Everything had changed very much by then. It did after her marriage. He frightened her from the first moment she saw him.”
“So in spite of the fact that he gave you your home and your comfortable retirement you do not like him.”
“Like him!” She laughed. It seems an odd word to use in connection with him. I wonder if anyone likes the Comte. People fear him. There’s no doubt of that. Many respect his wealth and position. Many more hate him. I suppose those who indulge in passing amours with him might say they loved him. Buth’feehim! “
“And you are one of those who hate him?”
“I would hate anyone who did what he did to Ursule.”
“Was he so cruel to her?”
“If she had never married him she would still be alive today.”
“You are not saying that he … killed her?”
“My dear Mademoiselle, I am saying just that.”
I shook my head and she put her hand over mine.
After that she said nothing more and for that day our tete-a-tete was over.
I thought a great deal about what Yvette had said. It was almost as though she had some secret information. If she had, I must discover what it was. That it would be detrimental to the Comte she had imp Bed
I shivered as I recalled vividly the expression on her face when she had talked of his killing his wife.
If he were there beside me I would be ready to believe this could not be true; when he was not with me I could assess the facts more calmly.
I must talk to Yvette. If I knew more of Ursule’s nature I might be able to throw some light on the subject.
Margot asked me to go into the town to buy ribbons for a gown that was being made for Chariot.
“You must go, Minelle,” she said.
“You will choose the right colour.”
I went alone. There had never been any question of our being escorted by day in -Grasseville and it would not be the first time I had gone into the town by myself.
The Chateau Grasseville far less grand than that of Silvaine was rather like a glorified country mansion scarcely worthy of the name chateau. The family owned another castle forty miles north-much bigger, I beard-but this was their favourite. It was gracious enough with its four pepper-pot towers and its grey stone walls rising from the slight incline which enabled it to remain in sight of the town and, standing aloof as it did, to dominate it.
It was mid-morning. The sun was beginning to climb. In a few hours it would be very hot.
As I walked into the town several people called a greeting. One woman seated on a basket asked how the little one was. I told her that Chariot was very well indeed.
“Poor mite! To be left like that. I would wring the neck of a mother.
Mademoiselle, who left a little one. Yes, I would, as easily as Monsieur Berray wrings the necks of his chickens. “
“No one could be better cared for than young Chariot is now, Madame.”
“I know it well. And young Madame … she is born to be a mother.
She has become one quickly, eh? Married but a few weeks . “
Clinging to her basket she tottered perilously, almost overcome by her own humour.
“Madame has a great fondness for babies,” I said. God bless her. “
I passed on. There was scarcely anyone who did not ask after the baby.
I was some time choosing the ribbons, and when I had done so I decided to have a cup of coffee and one of the delectable little cream cakes before I began to walk back.
I sat at a table under the blue umbrella and the coffee was brought to me by Madame Durand, who chatted a while about the baby who had had the good fortune to be left at the gates of the chateau.
When she had left me I sat brooding on what Yvette had told me and asking myself why she had conceived such a passionate hatred of the Comte. Nou-Nou had felt the same towards him. It could only be because of his treatment of Ursule as they both had such affection for her.
There was much I did not know of her. I had fancied her to be a peevish hypochondriac but it was not now easy to reconcile that assessment of her character with that of a woman who bad-inspired such devotion. With Nou-Nou who had lost her own child, it was understandable. Yvette was a different case. Yvette was a woman of good sense and independent spirit and since she had formed a great friendship with her employer’s daughter it must mean that there was something unusual about that daughter.
Always when I thought of the Comte and his affairs I was sooner or later in complete bewilderment.
As I sat there shielded from the sunshine by the blue umbrella, sipping my coffee and savouring my gateau, I had the strange feeling that I was being watched.
It was all the more extraordinary that I should feel this on a bright, sunny morning in the heart of the town. Turning as unobtrusively as I could, I noticed a man a few tables away from me. As I turned his head moved and he was staring straight ahead. I was sure he had been intent on me. Then it suddenly occurred to me that I had seen him before. It was when we were on our way from Paris to Grasseville. He had been at an inn in which we had stayed the night. It was something about the way his head was set on his shoulders which made him recognizable. His neck was slightly shorter than average, his shoulders faintly rounded. He wore a dark wig and one of the tall hats with a brim which hid part of his face-the type of hat which could be seen everywhere. His jacket and breeches were of the same nondescript brown as the hat. He looked, in fact, like many other people one saw in towns and villages and would never have attracted attention by his dress. It was merely the set of his head on his shoulders which made me recognize him.
I must be imagining his interest in me. Why should it be there? Unless he had heard, of course, that I came from the chateau and was the cousin of the new Madame who had recently adopted the baby found at the gates.
Yet for the moment that man had given me a twinge of uneasiness. Ever since that distressing event in the lane when I could so easily have lost my life, I had been on the alert.