Chapter 7 - Page 2

period was a solitary one. After breakfast she would go
out for a walk, usually to Kensington Gardens, and returning by way of
Westbourne Grove, to execute some small commissions for her mistress.
Between dinner and tea the time was mostly spent in the back room on the
first floor, which nobody else used; and when the weather permitted she
sat with the window open, and read aloud to improve herself in the art,
and practised writing and drawing, or read in some book Miss Starbrow had
recommended to her. With all her time so agreeably filled she did not
feel her loneliness, and the life of ease and plenty soon began to tell
on her appearance. Her skin became more pure and transparent, although
naturally pale; her eyes grew brighter, and could look glad as well as
sorrowful; her face lost its painfully bony look, and was rounder and
softer, and the straight lines and sharp angles of her girlish form
changed to graceful curves from day to day. Miss Starbrow, regarding her
with a curious and not untroubled smile, remarked:

"You are improving in your looks every day, Fan; by-and-by you will be a
beautiful girl--and then!"

The attitude of the servants had not changed towards her, the cook
continuing to observe a kind of neutrality which was scarcely benevolent,
while the housemaid's animosity was still active; but it had ceased to
trouble her very much. Since the evening on which Fan had baffled her by
blowing out the candle, Rosie had not attempted to inflict corporal
punishment beyond an occasional pinch or slap, but contented herself by
mocking and jeering, and sometimes spitting at her.

Rosie is destined to disappear from the history of Fan's early life in
the first third of this volume; but before that time her malice bore very
bitter fruit, and for that and other reasons her character is deserving
of some description.

She was decidedly pretty, short but well-shaped, with a small English
slightly-upturned nose; small mouth with ripe red lips, which were never
still except when she held them pressed with her sharp white teeth to
make them look redder and riper than ever. Her brown fluffy hair was worn
short like a boy's, and she looked not unlike a handsome high-spirited
boy, with brown eyes, mirthful and daring. She was extremely vivacious in
disposition, and active--too active, in fact, for she got through her
housemaid's work so quickly that it left her many hours of each day in
which to listen to the promptings of the demon of mischief. It was only
because she did her work so rapidly and so well that her mistress kept
her on--"put up with her," as she expressed it--in spite of her faults of
temper and tongue. But Rosie's heart was not in her work. She was
romantic and