The White Witch of Rosehall
Chapter 11: The Apparition
On the chair upon which Robert had been sitting Annie seated herself. She was thinking moodily, her fingers tapping the wood, her eyes bent upon the floor. She had seen Robert’s face when Millicent had openly flung at her the charge of murder. Its expression had not been wholly reassuring.
She mastered her voice; she wished to speak calmly.
“You see,” she said, “it would have been better if you had decided to live up at the Great House. You would have escaped all this. This one seems to have deceived you badly, Robert. She was Ashman’s mistress; he told me so himself.”
“He is quite capable of lying.”
“You are defending her, then?”
“There is nothing to defend. She is gone; you saw to that. But don’t you understand, Annie, how revolting all this is? You are a white woman, a lady, the mistress of Rosehall, and you come here and engage in a row with a coloured girl, a row that might have been a fight if her grandfather had not happened to come in when he did. Oh, yes, I heard her very distinctly. Well, and what do you say to her story?”
“It is all rubbish, of course; yet she will repeat it. She or her grandfather will probably tell other people, white people, about what happened tonight. There doesn’t seem to be much reticence in this country. Your name——”
“Is gone already,” interrupted Annie brutally. “Any number of people here know that you have stayed all night at the Great House with me; there is no secret about that. Why should you care? Why are you always dwelling on what other people may think or say?”
He gave no answer.
“You will soon get over your prudishness,” she smiled bitterly. “Indeed, considering the company you had tonight, and after having been with me last night, too, I should say that you were already the complete West Indian gentleman!” She sprang up, placed both her hands on his shoulders and looked searchingly into his face.
“Robert, don’t let us quarrel over a woman—especially a woman like that. You know I love you; I am yours entirely; you believe that, don’t you? This is my own little kingdom; we have no need to bother ourselves about outsiders. Come to the Great House with me, stay there; if you want me to marry you, I will, and as soon as you like. If you don’t want to get married, it doesn’t matter, so long as you are mine and I yours. You can be master here if you like. You will stick to me, won’t you, darling?”
“Yes,” he said, but without any great heartiness, “but I won’t live in the Great House, Annie.”
“And that girl will not come back to Rosehall,” she rapped out, her naturally high temper getting the better of the prudence with which she was endeavouring to regulate her words and conduct just then.
“She would be wise not to,” he answered dryly, and she winced. He was alluding, quite obviously, to Annie’s thirst for inflicting corporal punishment on others.
She changed the subject.
“We have a new book-keeper, Robert, I told you we were going to get one. You wil