Mrs. Rolland's bushy eyebrows frowned in stern disapproval of the new topic of conversation. 'I regret to hear it, my lady,' was all she said.
'Perhaps you have not been informed of what happened after you left Venice?' Agnes ventured to add. 'Ferrari left the palace secretly;and he has never been heard of since.'
Mrs. Rolland mysteriously closed her eyes--as if to exclude some vision of the lost courier which was of a nature to disturb a respectable woman.
'Nothing that Mr. Ferrari could do would surprise me,' she replied in her deepest bass tones.
'You speak rather harshly of him,' said Agnes.
Mrs. Rolland suddenly opened her eyes again. 'I speak harshly of nobody without reason,' she said. 'Mr. Ferrari behaved to me, Miss Lockwood, as no man living has ever behaved--before or since.'
'What did he do?'
Mrs. Rolland answered, with a stony stare of horror:--'He took liberties with me.'
Young Lady Montbarry suddenly turned aside, and put her handkerchief over her mouth in convulsions of suppressed laughter.
Mrs. Rolland went on, with a grim enjoyment of the bewilderment which her reply had produced in Agnes: 'And when I insisted on an apology, Miss, he had the audacity to say that the life at the palace was dull, and he didn't know how else to amuse himself!'
'I am afraid I have hardly made myself understood,' said Agnes.
'I am not speaking to you out of any interest in Ferrari.
Are you aware that he is married?'
'I pity his wife,' said Mrs. Rolland.
'She is naturally in great grief about him,' Agnes proceeded.
'She ought to thank God she is rid of him,' Mrs. Rolland interposed.
Agnes still persisted. 'I have known Mrs. Ferrari from her childhood, and I am sincerely anxious to help her in this matter. Did you notice anything, while you were at Venice, that would account for her husband's extraordinary disappearance? On what sort of terms, for instance, did he live with his master and mistress?'
'On terms of familiarity with his mistress,' said Mrs. Rolland, 'which were simply sickening to a respectable English servant.
She used to encourage him to talk to her about all his affairs--how he got on with his wife, and how pressed he was for money, and such like--just as if they were equals. Contemptible--that's what Icall it.'
'And his master?' Agnes continued. 'How did Ferrari get on with Lord Montbarry?'
'My lord used to live shut up with his studies and his sorrows,'
Mrs. Rolland answered, with a hard solemnity expressive of respect for his lordship's memory. Mr. Ferrari got his money when it was due;and he cared for nothing else. "If I could afford it, I would leave the place too; but I can't afford it." Those were the last words he said to me, on the morning when I left the palace.
I made no reply. After what had happened (on that other occasion)I was naturally not on speaking terms with Mr. Ferrari.'
'Can you really tell me nothing which will throw any light on this matter?'
'Nothing,' said Mrs. Rolland, with an undisguised relish of the disappointment that she was inflicting.
