Twenty-five years before, when Berene Dumont disappeared from
Beryngford, she had, quite unknown to herself, left one devoted
though humble friend behind, who sincerely mourned her absence.
Mrs Connor liked to be spoken of as "the wash-lady at the Palace."
Yet proud as she was of this appellation, she was not satisfied with
being an excellent laundress. She was a person of ambitions. To be
the owner of a lodging-house, like the Baroness, was her leading
ambition, and to possess a "peany" for her young daughter Kathleen
was another.
She kept her mind fixed on these two achievements, and she worked
always for those two results. And as mind rules matter, so the
laundress became in time the landlady of a comfortable and
respectable lodging-house, and in its parlour a piano was the chief
object of furniture.
Kathleen Connor learned to play; and at last to the joy of the
lodgers, she married and bore her "peany" away with her. During the
time when Mrs Connor was the ambitious "wash-lady" at the Palace,
Berene Dumont came to live there; and every morning when the young
woman carried the tray down to the kitchen after having served the
Baroness with her breakfast, she offered Mrs Connor a cup of coffee
and a slice of toast.
This simple act of thoughtfulness from the young dependant touched
the Irishwoman's tender heart and awoke her lasting gratitude. She
had heard Berene's story, and she had been prepared to mete out to
her that disdainful dislike which Erin almost invariably feels
towards France. Realising that the young widow was by birth and
breeding above the station of housemaid, Mrs Connor and the servants
had expected her to treat them with the same lofty airs which the
Baroness made familiar to her servants. When, instead, Berene
toasted the bread for Mrs Connor, and poured the coffee and placed it
on the kitchen table with her own hands, the heart of the wash-lady
melted in her ample breast. When the heart of the daughter of Erin
melts, it permeates her whole being; and Mrs Connor became a secret
devotee at the shrine of Miss Dumont.
She had never entertained cordial feelings toward the Baroness. When
a society lady--especially a titled one--enters into competition with
working people, and yet refuses to associate with them, it always
incites their enmity. The working population of Beryngford, from the
highest to the lowest grades, felt a sense of resentment toward the
Baroness, who in her capacity of landlady still maintained the airs
of a grand dame, and succeeded in keeping her footing with some of
the most fashionable people in the town.