Monica Knollys and Madame de la Rougierre

Monica Knollys and Madame de la Rougierre share a prior acquaintance that becomes a source of concealed danger for Maud: Monica recognizes the governess, but will not initially tell Maud what she knows. Their relationship is defined by distrust, opposed accounts of past injury, and a struggle to influence the girl caught between them.

Recognition and Concealment

When Monica and Maud enter Madame’s room, the governess is pretending to sleep with the bedclothes held tightly over her face. Because she cannot speak without betraying the performance, Monica draws the coverlet back. The glimpse of Madame’s profile changes Monica’s expression: her usually good-humoured face darkens with curiosity and unpleasant surprise, and she stands rigidly beside the bed, recoiling as she looks down at the woman.

Monica names the person she has uncovered as Madame de la Rougierre, with unmistakable disdain. Madame sits up flushed from being wrapped close in the bedding and avoids looking directly at her. Maud, frightened and amazed, watches a recognition whose history is not yet available to her. The scene establishes that Monica’s response is not a stranger’s suspicion: she remembers the face, and her shock is sharpened by what she recognizes.

Madame acknowledges that she is married and says she thought everyone who knew her had heard of it. She describes the marriage as respectable for a woman of her rank and suggests that she will not need to remain a governess for long. Monica answers dryly, still pale and looking at Madame with dark wonder. The exchange exposes a fact about Madame’s identity while leaving the nature of her earlier connection to Monica undisclosed.

Two Accounts of Enmity

Afterward, Maud asks Monica whether Madame is wicked and admits that something about her seems ghostly and frightening. Monica makes a sharp distinction between that impression and what she can actually confirm: she does not know whether Madame is wicked, but remembers her face, dislikes her, and suspects that she has feigned illness to avoid Monica. Her suspicion turns Madame’s apparent sickness into part of the encounter’s performance, though the text presents it as Monica’s judgment rather than established fact.

When Maud asks who Madame is, Monica says that the governess assures her she is Madame de la Rougierre, adding that this is presumably the French form in which she calls herself. Her laugh is uneasy. Asked again for an explanation, Monica says she has little she can tell Maud, promises to speak to Austin the next morning, and firmly refuses to say more. The refusal protects the past from Maud’s questions even as it confirms that Monica’s recognition carries weight. She softens the rebuff with a laugh, a slap on Maud’s cheek, and a kiss, restoring affection without lifting the veil.

Madame offers Maud the opposing account. She says that she was not accusing Maud of intrusion but believes Monica sent her to the door secretly, and describes Monica as an enemy without cause. Madame further claims that Monica has tried to injure her and might use an innocent person unknowingly to serve her malice. She weeps while making this allegation; Maud observes that Madame can summon tears at will. The display of vulnerability thus accompanies a calculatedly candid presentation of herself as the injured party.

Warning and Counter-Influence

Monica’s decisive intervention comes before she leaves. Angry with Austin for his conduct, she tells Maud that Madame must be her enemy, calling her deep, daring, and unscrupulous. Monica does not supply the circumstances that have led her to this conclusion, but she converts recognition into a practical warning: Maud must cease to behave as a child and learn reserve, controlling her speech, conduct, and even her expressions.

The advice is specific. Monica tells Maud not to quarrel with Madame, not to reveal anything she may know about her father’s business, and to remain watchful: she should observe everything and disclose nothing. Her instruction makes the conflict more than a private dislike between two women. Monica understands that Madame’s proximity to Maud gives her opportunities to gather information, while Maud’s ignorance makes her vulnerable to being used without knowing it.

Madame’s effort to discredit Monica directly contests that warning. She casts Monica’s hostility as baseless persecution and suggests that even Maud’s visit may have been engineered to serve it. The two women therefore compete to define the other for Maud: Monica offers guarded knowledge and counsel, while Madame offers an emotionally persuasive account of victimhood. Because Monica withholds the history behind her certainty, Maud is left to weigh an explicit warning against a performance of injured candor.

Significance of the Relationship

The relationship is built through asymmetrical disclosure. Monica recognizes Madame but keeps the grounds of recognition to herself; Madame says enough to frame Monica as an enemy but gives Maud no independent means of judging the allegation. Neither account reaches Maud as a complete explanation. That gap turns their old acquaintance into suspense and makes Maud’s attention to gestures, evasions, and changing expressions part of the danger.

Their opposed methods also establish a contrast between warning and persuasion. Monica’s affection for Maud appears in the cheek-slap and kiss, but her counsel demands discipline and secrecy rather than comfort alone. Madame’s tears, meanwhile, accompany a claim that Monica’s hostility is unjust. The episode does not settle the full history between them; it shows instead how their hostility enters Maud’s life as competing attempts to control what she knows, whom she trusts, and how carefully she must behave.