Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/111

 to you. It is a sad history. It is sad for Marthe that it should be talked of.'

Jill was aware of feeling, for the first time, warmly fond of the old lady. 'No one has spoken to me at all. Would you rather not talk any more about it?'

'No,' said Madame de Lamouderie, after a moment. 'No; I do not mind telling you. You are not like those I mean: the vulgar rabble. She was mad; but it was the result of an accident; an accident to her head,' the old lady put her finger on her forehead above her eye. 'She was here for five years before her death; in Marthe's care. I first saw Marthe leading her among the woods;—she was hardly more than a child. It was terrible to see such a look on the face of a child. The mother leaned on her and she wore a black patch over her eye. She was as white as a ghost. All in black. Dieu!—it frightened me, the first time I saw them!'

It almost frightened Jill to hear her, and she remembered Dick's uncanny fear at the door after they had seen Mademoiselle Ludérac, white as a ghost—all in black—come round the corner of the house.

'But how wrong, how cruel, that such a thing should have been put on a child,' she said after a moment. 'Was there no older relation to help her?'

'No. No one. And the mother became frenzied if Marthe were not always beside her. They lived quite alone. They had no friends. All the village people feared the mad-woman and once stones were thrown at her and the child as they passed along the road.'

Madame de Lamouderie's face had sunken to such