Third Period Chapter 28 The Maid and the Keyhole

"For your mistress?"

"Yes."

"Does she wish to write to me?"

"Yes."

Hugh gave the strange creature the address of his hotel in Paris. For a
moment, her eyes rested on him with an expression of steady scrutiny.
She opened the door to go out---stopped--considered--came back again.

"I want to speak for myself," she said. "Do you care to hear what a
servant has to say?"

Mountjoy replied that he was ready to hear what she had to say. She at
once stepped up to him, and addressed him in these words: "I think you are fond of my mistress?"

An ordinary man might have resented the familiar manner in which she
had expressed herself. Mountjoy waited for what was still to come.
Fanny Mere abruptly went on, with a nearer approach to agitation in her
manner than she had shown yet: "My mistress took me into her service; she trusted me when other ladies
would have shown me the door. When she sent for me to see her, my
character was lost; I had nobody to feel for me, nobody to help me. She
is the one friend who held out a hand to me. I hate the men; I don't
care for the women. Except one. Being a servant I mustn't say I love
that one. If I was a lady, I don't know that I should say it. Love is
cant; love is rubbish. Tell me one thing. Is the doctor a friend of
yours?"