University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
A DETECTION.

Though too confirmed in evil to be reformed by
Lucy's gentle influence, Adéle, for some weeks
after her conversation with Lucy, was guarded before
her. She wore only her own finery, neither
indulged herself nor a “cher ami” with Champagne
or Burgundy, and only went out with Mrs. Hartell's
knowledge. This was often enough; for Lucy was
the pack-horse on whom she was allowed to cast
all her burdens. She was more lavish than ever
of her hollow caresses and pretty French epithets
on Eugene in his parents' presence, and the little
fellow requited her as well as if he had understood
them, by preferring everybody else to her. The
constraint of Lucy's presence was becoming intolerable
to Adéle, and she took a new course,
treating her with injustice and constant petulance,
in the hope of driving her to seek a new service.
But this was not easy to effect. Lucy had been
early impressed with an aversion to change, as an
evil in itself; and, besides, her love for Eugene
would not permit her to desert him. She had no
confidence in Adéle, and she considered herself
pledged not to communicate her distrust till there was
some further overt act on Adéle's part. There were,
too, in her situation—where are there not?—some alleviating
circumstances. She had the half of every

Sunday to go to church; and true to the stroke of
the bell, Charles Lovett was on the steps to go
with her. She had often whole evenings, when
Adéle had gone out without preparing her taskwork,
to read and write. She wrote often to her
mother and Mrs. Lovett. Her separation from all
she dearly loved sometimes brought the tears from
her eyes to the paper; but she wrote cheerfully,
said nothing of her trials, or put them in the faint
hues of the distance in the landscape, while her
pleasures filled the foreground. The letters began
and ended with some allusion to Charles. Sometimes
“Charles thought the sermon the best he
ever heard,” or “Charles thought it not quite so
instructive as the last Sabbath.” “It was a rainy
Sunday, and Charles prudently wore his old coat,”
or “it was such a beautiful Sabbath, and Charles
looked so well in his new coat.” “Last Sabbath,
dear Mrs. Lovett, Charles laughed and said my old
bonnet wanted a new riband and my old riband a
new bonnet; and so, to reconcile him, I told him
how, remembering mother's advice, never to wear
what was not suited to my circumstances, though
given to me, I had declined a present from Mrs.
Hartell of a French pink satin hat, hardly soiled at
all. The next day he sent me the greatest beauty
of a little straw bonnet with a white satin riband—
I hope it will never wear out!” “Mother, there is
one thing I wish you would tell me whether you
think wrong. Charles and I always come the
longest way home from church—it seems very
short too.” “Is not it strange Eugene should know
Charles? When I am holding him up at the window,
and he sees him coming up the street, he
claps his hands; but, oh, the poor little fellow is
so affectionate! When I come home he shouts as
if he would go mad with pleasure.”

Lucy had now been four months at the Hartells',
and she was beginning to suffer the natural consequences
of her position. Her principles rested
too firmly on a sure basis to be shaken, and her
dispositions were too sweet, they had too much
natural force, to be easily impaired; but her habits,
like the habits of most young people, were flexible,
and at the mercy of circumstances. She fared
sumptuously every day, and in her steril and inactive
life her meals became events. She had
felt a blush steal into her cheek as she detected
herself mentally wondering how she had existed
day after day on rye-mush. Trained from infancy
to early rising, it had seemed as natural to her as
to the birds to rise when the day broke. At Mrs.
Hartell's she occupied a sofa-bed in the nursery.
At first it had seemed to her a real misery to wait,
hour after hour in the morning, till it pleased Miss
Adéle to have the blinds opened; but, in the process
of a few weeks, partly from keeping irregular
hours at night, and partly from the facility that all
young people have at sleeping, and partly, probably,
from the physical indolence that seems ever ready
to encroach on our energies, she became at first
passive, and then, like the sluggard, she loved a
little more folding of the arms to sleep, and a little
more slumber.

From having been a very bee in her industry,
she was falling into the lounging, desultory habits
of the household. Sometimes she would be so
hurried by Adéle that she was compelled to despatch

her work in the most slovenly manner, and
then precious minutes and half hours that she had
been taught to cherish as “the stuff that life is
made of” were wasted in lounging about with
the children, or gazing out of the window with
them, listening to their comments on the fine clothes
that were worn by those people whose only part
in life seems to be to play walking advertisers for
dressmakers. Dress was the constant theme at
Mrs. Hartell's. Lucy had scarcely ever heard her
mistress talk of anything else. Upon this topic
Adéle was almost eloquent, and the little girls naturally
adopted and repeated what they heard, so
that life, in the aspect it now offered to Lucy, afforded
ground for the fanciful theory of a certain
writer, who supposes man, “that paragon of animals
and quintessence of dust,” to be made up of
clothes. Lucy had been well fortified by her
mother to resist this ruling passion of the house,
but she was not exempt from the infirmity of her
age and sex; and there is no knowing how long
she might have resisted the deteriorating influences
that make half the world creatures of mere sense
and frivolity, had they not been suddenly interrupted.

Eugene had arrived at the teething period, trying
to the soul of mothers and nurses. Lucy's days
and evenings were devoted to soothing him. At
night he was left to Adéle's tender mercies. Her
virtue could not be expected to stand the test of
his wakefulness and fretting, and repeatedly Lucy
was startled from her deep sleep by the shrieks of
the child; and when involuntarily she sprang to his
bedside, the poor little fellow most beseechingly

stretched out his arms to her. She suspected that
Adéle, in her impatience, inflicted some personal
violence upon him, and particularly after hearing
her assure Mr. Hartell the next morning that it was
the cries of cats, and not his child's, that had awakened
him. On the same morning she saw Eugene
frequently put his hand to a part of the arm covered
by his sleeve, and, on examining it, she found it
black and blue, and looking as if it had been severely
pinched. “Could Adéle,” she asked herself,
“have done this?” it seemed to her too fiendish
an act; but suspicion had taken possession
of her, and she determined to be watchful. She
loved the child fondly, and felt the more tenderly
for it from the carelessness of its natural protector.

The next night Eugene waked at his usual time,
and his first whimper roused Lucy from her light
slumbers. She took care to give no sign that she
was awake. Adéle got out of bed, and taking up
the night-lamp, and ascertaining, as she supposed,
that Lucy was sleeping, she took a vial from under
the pillow, dropped a few drops into Eugene's milk,
and fed him. He soon fell asleep, and, as Lucy
observed, slept late and heavily the next morning.
All the next day Lucy was wretched. She shed
bitter tears over the poor little boy, who, it seemed
to her, would be the victim of his unprincipled
nurse. She was uncertain as to the best course to
pursue. She felt sure Adéle had given the child laudanum;
but what use would there be in telling the
mother so? Adéle would frame her own lies for
the occasion, and would be believed; and then she
herself would probably be sent off in disgrace, and
no one would be left to comfort the poor little boy.

But had she not best address herself to the father?
it would be easy to rouse his fears. He was now
in Philadelphia, and expected home the next day.
In the intervening night she might perhaps get
some proof to substantiate her suspicions. Thus,
with a prudence beyond her years, determining on
her course, she was careful not to betray, by word
or sign, her suspicions to Adéle. The next night
Lucy lay awake with a beating heart till Eugene
began his usual fretting. Adéle gave him his milk,
and soothed him to sleep; but his sleep was restless,
and she was long kept awake. Just as her
breathing betrayed that she had fallen asleep, and
Lucy, believing that all danger for that night was
past, was yielding to the demands of nature, Eugene
started up wide awake and screaming. This was
too much for Adéle's patience. He had taken his
milk, and she had no proper resource for quieting
him, so she adopted that most convenient to herself;
and rising, she took the vial from its hiding-place,
and, with her back towards Lucy's bed, was
in the act of dropping some drops into a spoon,
when Lucy sprang upon her and wrested the vial
from her hand. A scuffle ensued; and Adéle succeeding
in regaining the vial, instantly threw it into
the grate; and then, recovering her self-possession,
as even weak persons sometimes do in great emergencies,
she said, with forced calmness, “What is
it all? Why let me not take my drops?”

“Your drops, Adéle! oh, don't think to deceive
me! It was the drops I saw you give the baby
last night! horrid laudanum!”

“Laudanum—I swear it was not—you have no
proof it was laudanum.”

“Have I not?” said Lucy, pointing to some drops
that had fallen on the sleeve of her night-dress.

“They are on you, not on me. I will first tell
the story to Mrs. Hartell—she will believe you—
never—never.”

“But Mr. Hartell will believe me; and as surely
as he returns to-morrow I will tell him the whole
truth.”

Adéle's hardihood now forsook her utterly. She
saw the abyss opening at her feet, and falling on
her knees and wringing her hands, she besought
Lucy to have pity on her. “I am away from my
country,” she said; “I left all to come with Mrs.
Hartell—I have no friend in this country—nobody
will care for me—nobody will pity me.”

“I do pity you, Adéle—but—”

“But you will tell all to monsieur; is that what
you call pity? Oh, Dieu merci! he will be like
one tiger to me.”

“And what have you been to this poor little helpless
child that was trusted to you, Adéle? think
of that.” Lucy had taken up Eugene, and he had
quietly lain his head on her bosom, and was looking
up into her face as if he knew she was his
guardian angel. Lucy caressed him tenderly; and
then turning up the sleeve of his night-dress, she
showed Adéle the traces of her violence on his
arm. Adéle well understood her, but she said
nothing. She perceived there was no use in any
further lies to Lucy; and when Lucy added, “I
know what my duty is; and though, as I told you,
Adéle, I am very sorry for you, I will certainly do
it.” Adéle saw there was no use in any further
supplication. She rose from her knees, and, after a

few moments' silence, she said, with a totally
changed tone, “I will not be lost by one such
young person as you.”

Poor Lucy, little imagining how much this threat
imported, took her protégée to her narrow bed,
where they soon fell asleep together, while Adéle
lay tossing on hers, and contriving a cruel plot.