Mrs Charles Fitzroy was delighted with her new Italian governess.
She had contemplated engaging a Frenchwoman or a Swiss to teach little
Bertha, but most fortunately, General Borselli, whom she had met during
a season spent with her husband in Rome, came to her aid and recommended
the daughter of the deceased Colonel Nodari. She came, and her slight,
rather tall figure in neat black, her well-cut, handsome features, and
her plainly dressed hair, almost black, had attracted her mistress from
the first. She was refined, unobtrusive, merry-eyed, and just the kind
of bright companion and governess she required for her child. She
noticed that although her dresses were well made there were tokens, in
more ways than one, that since her father's death she and her mother had
fallen upon evil days.
Fitzroy himself liked her. There was something interesting in her
quaint broken English and in her foreign gestures that commended itself
to him in preference to the angular blue-stocking Miss Gardener, who had
recently left his wife's service. So "Mademoiselle," as they called her
in preference to the rather ugly word "Signorina," quickly became as one
of the family, and within a week of her arrival she met that pompous
millionaire of eggs and bacon, Mr Morgan-Mason.
The latter became as much attracted by her as were the others, but she
exerted no effort to captivate or to gain admiration, merely acting her
part modestly as became the humble governess in a wealthy family.
Nevertheless she recollected the general's instructions, and more than
once, in the secrecy of her room, wrote to that address in Genoa
reporting her progress.
Mrs Charles Fitzroy, a pretty and rather extravagant woman, still on
the right side of forty, moved in a very good set, and entertained a
good deal at her house in Brook Street. Her husband was a magnate in
the city, and the fact that Morgan-Mason was her brother gave her the
_entree_ to houses which would have otherwise been closed to her.
Fitzroy, a rather short, grey-bearded man with a florid countenance, had
risen from a clerk's stool to be what he was, and differed in little
particular from thousands of well-off city men who live in the West End
and enter the anteroom of society.
Nevertheless, through the influence of the white-waistcoated Member for
South-West Norfolk, a good many well-known people dined at Brook Street
from time to time, while to Morgan-Mason's smart gatherings at his house
or his dinners at the Carlton his sister and her husband were always
invited.
It was pleasant enough to mix with such people as surrounded her
employers, but, truth to tell, Filomena Nodari quickly found the post of
governess monotonous and irksome. First of all, it was difficult for
her to preserve her unassuming character as a paid menial; secondly, she
hated children; thirdly, Bertha was a spoilt child, with no leaning
towards lessons; and fourthly, the small bare schoolroom at the top of
the house was a gloomy place in which to spend those bright spring days.
Still, she never complained. She was well paid by the Minister of War,
and with a woman's love of intrigue, she had set herself to carefully
accomplish the difficult task which Borselli had given her.
She was fortunate, inasmuch as Mrs Fitzroy treated her with such
consideration. Indeed, sometimes when there were no visitors, she would
invite her in to lunch with her, when they would generally talk French,
a language with which her mistress was well acquainted.
So well did she act her part that the governess was quickly voted a
treasure, and as Bertha was a particular favourite of her Uncle
Morgan-Mason, the latter became gradually interested in her. Sometimes,
indeed, he would come up to the schoolroom while lessons were in
progress with an excuse to leave a packet of sweetmeats for his niece;
but Filomena, with her woman's shrewd intuition, knew that he came to
have a little chat with her.
He was inquisitive--always inquisitive.
One day as he sat with Bertha upon his knee in the schoolroom he asked
about her parentage.
"You are a native of Bologna--where the sausages come from?" he laughed.
Perhaps he sold that comestible at his many shops, she reflected, but
she answered in her broken English--
"Yes. But just as none of straw hats are made in Leghorn, so there are
none of Bologna sausages made in Bologna."
"You must be already tired of life here in London after your beautiful
Italy?" he remarked.
"Ah! non," she assured him. "I like your London--what leetle I have
seen of it. But that is not very much. I take Bertha for one walk in
the park, or down to what you call Kensington, every day. And many
times we ascend to the roof of an omnibus. But omnibuses are so
puzzling," she added, with a laugh. "You never know where one goes. We
always ascend and seet there till we come to the end of the voyage. But
we make some amusing errors many times. Only the day before to-day we
ascended on a 'bus outside the Gallery Nationale, where are the
fountains, paid twenty centimes--I mean two pennies--_eh bien_! the next
street-corner past a church they turned us off--the omnibus went no
farther!"