Even the dilemmas and distresses, when they asserted
themselves, were more or less overswept, as if for the sake of decency,
by billows of spotted muslin, with which Celine, who felt the romance of
the situation, made herself marvellously clever. Celine, indeed, was
worth in this exigency many times her wages. Alicia hastened to "lend"
her to the fullest extent, and she spent hours with Miss Filbert
contriving and arranging, a kind of conductor of her mistress's
beneficence. It became plain that Laura preferred the conductor to the
source, and they stitched together while she, with careful reserves,
watched for the casual sidelights upon modes and manners that came from
the lips of the maid. At other times she occupied herself with her
Bible--she had adopted, as will be guessed, the grateful theory of Mrs.
Sand, that she had only changed the sphere of her ministrations. She had
several times felt, seated beside Celine, how grateful she ought to be
that her spiritual paths for the future would be paths of such
pleasantness, though Celine herself seemed to stand rather far from
their border, probably because she was a Catholic. Mrs. Sand came
occasionally to upbuild her, and after that Laura had always a fresh
remembrance of how much she had done in giving so generous a friend as
Duff Lindsay to the Army in Calcutta.
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