Then he bent
her, without her knowledge, to take his own attitude towards his
mistress. No more could be gotten out of John Darby's wife than out
of John Darby concerning the doings at the Squire's house. She met
curiosity with a flash of hot temper, and he with surly taciturnity,
and both intimidated.
The third of Evelina's servants was the woman who had nursed her
mother, and she was naturally subdued and undemonstrative, and
rendered still more so by a ceaseless monotony of life. She never
went to meeting, and was seldom seen outside the house. A passing
vision of a long white-capped face at a window was about all the
neighbors ever saw of this woman.
So Evelina's gentle privacy was well guarded by her own household, as
by a faithful system of domestic police. She grew old peacefully
behind her green hedge, shielded effectually from all rough bristles
of curiosity. Every new spring her own bloom showed paler beside the
new bloom of her flowers, but people could not see it.
Some thirty years after the Squire's death the man John Darby died;
his wife, a year later. That left Evelina alone with the old woman
who had nursed her mother. She was very old, but not feeble, and
quite able to perform the simple household tasks for herself and
Evelina. An old man, who saved himself from the almshouse in such
ways, came daily to do the rougher part of the garden-work in John
Darby's stead.
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