Let me add here, regretfully but with infinite respect, one other thing
about Parker, and then she shall drop into her proper place.
I must confess, with a slight tinge of humiliation, that I pursued this
young woman to her present situation at Highton Towers--maid she is to
that eminent religious and social propagandist, the Lady Jane Glanville.
There were certain details of which I stood in need, certain scenes and
conversations of which my passion for verisimilitude had scarcely a
crumb to go upon. And from first to last, what she must have seen and
learnt and inferred would amount practically to everything.
I put this to her frankly. She made no pretence of not understanding me
nor of ignorance of certain hidden things. When I had finished she
regarded me with a level regard.
"I couldn't think of it, sir," she said. "It wouldn't be at all
according to my ideas."
"But!--It surely couldn't possibly hurt you now to tell me."
"I'm afraid I couldn't, sir."
"It couldn't hurt anyone."
"It isn't that, sir."
"I should see you didn't lose by it, you know."
She looked at me politely, having said what she intended to say.
And, in spite of what became at last very fine and handsome inducements,
that remained the inflexible Parker's reply. Even after I had come to
an end with my finesse and attempted to bribe her in the grossest
manner, she displayed nothing but a becoming respect for my impregnable
social superiority.
"I couldn't think of it, sir," she repeated. "It wouldn't be at all
according to my ideas."
And if in the end you should find this story to any extent vague or
incomplete, I trust you will remember how the inflexible severity of
Parker's ideas stood in my way.