She knew how to give directions without seeming to be giving orders and if anyone was lax she saw to the thing herself.

When she realized how much spare time she had she asked to be allowed to allot specific hours to specific duties, and this routine was thenceforth punctiliously observed. She worked at what she had to do in a way Charlotte had anticipated from what the schoolmaster had told her and she let her alone to carry on in her own fashion. Only now and then she would try to stimulate her in some fresh direction. She would slip worn-down pens into her room so as to induce her to write with a more fluent hand, but soon they were cut sharp again like her own pens.

The women had decided always to talk in French when they were alone. Charlotte stuck to this resolve the more firmly since Ottilie was more communicative in the foreign tongue. It had been suggested to her that practising it was a duty. Under these circumstances she often said more than she apparently intended. Charlotte particularly enjoyed her occasional closely-observed but affectionate descriptions of the whole boarding-school institution. Ottilie became a treasured companion and Charlotte hoped some day to find a dependable friend in her.

In the meantime, Charlotte took out again all the old letters and reports referring to Ottilie and refreshed her memory of how the headmistress and the schoolmaster had judged the dear child, so as to compare these opinions with the girl herself. Charlotte believed you could not get to know the character of the people you had to live with too quickly, so as to know what could be expected of them and cultivated in them or what you had once and for all to allow and forgive them.

This research revealed nothing fresh, it is true, but much that she already knew became more significant and striking. Ottilie’s moderation in eating and drinking, for example, was now a source of real anxiety.

The next thing to engage the women was the question of dress. Charlotte demanded of Ottilie that she should be better dressed. The industrious child at once set to and cut up the material she had earlier been given and with only a little assistance was quickly able to make it into something very elegant. The more fashionable dresses improved her figure. Since what is pleasant about you extends even to your clothes, your good qualities seem to appear in a new and more charming light if you provide them with a new background.

And so she became for the men more and more what she had been from the first, which was (to call things by their right names) a feast for the eyes. For if the emerald is through its loveliness a pleasure to the sight, and indeed exerts a certain healing power on that noble sense, human beauty acts with far greater force on both inner and outer senses, so that he who beholds it is exempt from evil and feels in harmony with himself and with the world.

The company had thus profited in several ways from Ottilie’s arrival. The two friends broke up their solitary meetings more punctually, even to the minute, and at mealtimes, or for tea, or for walks, they did not keep the women waiting longer than was reasonable. They did not hurry so quickly away from the table, especially in the evenings. Charlotte noticed all this and kept both men under observation. She wanted to know which one was the instigator of this change of behaviour, but could see no distinction between them. Both of them were being altogether more sociable. When talking together they seemed to bear in mind what subjects might engage Ottilie’s interest and about which she might know and understand something. When reading aloud they broke off until she returned. They became gentler and on the whole more communicative.

In response, Ottilie’s eagerness to make herself useful increased with every day that passed. The better she got to know the circumstances of the house and of the people in it, the more spiritedly did she go about her work and the more promptly did she understand the meaning of every glance, of every gesture, of a mere half-word, of a mere sound. She had at all times the same quiet attentiveness and the same unruffled alertness. And so her sitting and standing, her coming and going, her fetching and carrying and sitting again without any appearance of restlessness, was a perpetual change, perpetual exquisite motion. And you could not hear her when she walked, she walked so softly.

This proper zeal of Ottilie’s to be serviceable gave Charlotte much pleasure. But she did not hide one thing which seemed to her not quite right. ‘One of the most laudable attentions we can show to other people,’ she said to her one day, ‘is to stoop down if they should drop something and try to pick it up quickly.