Kitobni o'qish: «The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes», sahifa 2

If this could only have lasted longer! but he was taking her along an irregular street, and too soon she saw a slight colour flit across his cheek, and his eyebrows contract, as he unlatched a green door in a high wall, and entered a little flagged court, decorated by a stand destined for flowers.

Albinia caught the blush, and felt more bashful than she had believed was in her nature, but she had a warm-hearted determination that she would work down prejudices, and like and be liked by all that concerned him and his children. So she smiled at him, and went bravely on into the matted hall and up the narrow stairs, and made a laughing sign when he looked back at her ere he tapped at the sitting-room door.

It was opened from within before he could turn the handle, and a shrill voice, exaggerating those of the girls, showered welcomes with such rapidity, that Albinia was seated at the table, and had been helped to cold chicken, before she could look round, or make much answer to reiterations of ‘so very kind.’

It was a small room, loaded with knicknacks and cushions, like a repository of every species of female ornamental handiwork in vogue for the last half century, and the luncheon-tray in the middle of all, ready for six people, for the two girls were there, and though Mr. Kendal stood up by the fire, and would not eat, he and his black image, reflected backwards and forwards in the looking-glass and in the little round mirror, seemed to take up more room than if he had been seated.

Mrs. Meadows was slight, shrunken, and gentle-looking, with a sweet tone in her voice, great softness of manner, and pretty blue eyes. Albinia only wished that she had worn mourning, it would have been so much more becoming than bright colours, but that was soon overlooked in gratitude for her affectionate reception, and in the warmth of feeling excited by her evident fondness and solicitude for Mr. Kendal.

Miss Meadows was gaily dressed in youthful fashion, such as evidently had set her off to advantage when she had been a bright, dark, handsome girl; but her hair was thin, her cheeks haggard, the colour hardened, and her forty years apparent, above all, in an uncomfortable furrow on the brow and round the mouth; her voice had a sharp distressed tone that grated even in her lowest key, and though she did not stammer, she could never finish a sentence, but made half-a-dozen disjointed commencements whenever she spoke. Albinia pitied her, and thought her nervous, for she was painfully assiduous in waiting on every one, scarcely sitting down for a minute before she was sure that pepper, or pickle, or new bread, or stale bread, or something was wanted, and squeezing round the table to help some one, or to ring the bell every third minute, and all in a dress that had a teasing stiff silken rustle. She offered Mr. Kendal everything in the shape of food, till he purchased peace by submitting to take a hard biscuit, while Albinia was not allowed her glass of water till all manner of wines, foreign and domestic, had been tried upon her in vain.

Conversation was not easy. Gilbert was inquired after, and his aunt spoke in her shrill, injured note, as she declared that she had done her utmost to persuade him to have the tooth extracted, and began a history of what the dentist ought to have done five years ago.

His grandmother softly pitied him, saying poor little Gibbie was such a delicate boy, and required such careful treatment; and when Albinia hoped that he was outgrowing his ill-health, she was amused to find that desponding compassion would have been more pleasing.

There had been a transaction about a servant in her behalf: and Miss Meadows insisted on hunting up a note, searching all about the room, and making her mother and Sophy move from the front of two table-drawers, a disturbance which Sophy did not take with such placid looks as did her grandmother.

The name of the maid was Eweretta Dobson, at which there was a general exclamation.

‘I wonder what is the history of the name,’ said Albinia; ‘it sounds like nothing but the diminutive of ewer. I hope she will not be the little pitcher with long ears.’

Mr. Kendal looked as much amused as he ever did, but no one else gave the least token of so much as knowing what she meant, and she felt as if she had been making a foolish attempt at wit.

‘You need not call her so,’ was all that Mrs. Meadows said.

‘I do not like calling servants by anything but their true names,’ answered Albinia; ‘it does not seem to me treating them with proper respect to change their names, as if we thought them too good for them. It is using them like slaves.

Lucy exclaimed, ‘Why! grandmamma’s Betty is really named Philadelphia.’

Albinia laughed, but was disconcerted by finding that she had really given annoyance. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said. ‘It is only a fancy of my own. I am afraid that I have many fancies for my friends to bear with. You see I have so fine a name of my own, that I have a fellow-feeling for those under the same affliction; and I believe some servants like an alias rather than be teased for their finery, so I shall give Miss Eweretta her choice between that and her surname.

The old lady looked good-natured, and that matter blew over; but Miss Meadows fell into another complication of pros and cons about writing for the woman’s character, looking miserably harassed whether she should write, or Mrs. Kendal, before she had been called upon.

Albinia supposed that Mrs. Wolfe might call in the course of the week; but this Miss Meadows did not know, and she embarked in so many half speeches, and looked so mysterious and significant at her mother, that Albinia began to suspect that some dreadful truth was behind.

‘Perhaps,’ said the old lady, ‘perhaps Mrs. Kendal might make it understood through you, my dear Maria, that she is ready to receive visits.’

‘I suppose they must be!’ said Albinia.

‘You see, my dear, people would be most happy, but they do not know whether you have arrived. You have not appeared at church, as I may say.’

‘Indeed,’ said Albinia, much diverted by her new discoveries in the realms of etiquette, ‘I was rather in a cupboard, I must allow. Ought we to have sailed up the aisle in state in the Grandison pattern? Are you ready?’ and she glanced up at her husband, but he only half heard.

‘No,’ said Miss Meadows, fretfully; ‘but you have not appeared as a bride. The straw bonnet—you see people cannot tell whether you are not incog, as yet—’

To refrain from laughing was impossible. ‘My tarn cap,’ she exclaimed; ‘I am invisible in it! What shall I do? I fear I shall never be producible, for indeed it is my very best, my veritable wedding-bonnet!’

Lucy looked as if she thought it not worth while to be married for no better a bonnet than that.

‘Absurdity!’ said Mr. Kendal.

If he would but have given a good hearty laugh, thought Albinia, what a consolation it would be! but she considered herself to have had a lesson against laughing in that house, and was very glad when he proposed going home. He took a kind, affectionate leave of the old lady, who again looked fondly in big face, and rejoiced in his having recovered his looks.

As they arrived at home, Lucy announced that she was just going to speak to Lizzie Osborn, and Sophy ran after her to a house of about the same degree as their own, but dignified as Mount Lodge, because it stood on the hill side of the street, while Mr. Kendal’s house was for more gentility called ‘Willow Lawn.’ Gilbert was not to be found; but at four o’clock the whole party met at dinner, before the evening service.

Gilbert could eat little, and on going back to the fire to roast his cheek instead of going to church, was told by his father, ‘I cannot have this going on. You must go to Mr. Bowles directly after breakfast to-morrow, have the tooth drawn, and then go on to Mr. Salsted’s.

The tone was one that admitted of no rebellion. If Mr. Kendal interfered little, his authority was absolute where he did interfere, and Albinia could only speak a few kind words of encouragement, but the boy was vexed and moody, seemed half asleep when they came home, and went to bed as soon as tea was over.

Sophy went to bed too, Mr. Kendal went to his study, and Albinia, after this day of novelty and excitement, drew her chair to the fire, and as Lucy was hanging wearily about, called her to her side, and made her talk, believing that there was more use in studying the girl’s character than even in suggesting some occupation, though that was apparently the great want of the whole family on Sunday.

Lucy’s first confidence was that Gilbert had not been out alone, but with that Archibald Tritton. Mr. Tritton had a great farm, and was a sort of gentleman, and Gilbert was always after that Archy. She thought it ‘very undesirable,’ and Aunt Maria had talked to him about it, but he never listened to Aunt Maria.

Albinia privately thought that it must be a severe penance to listen to Aunt Maria, and took Gilbert’s part. She supposed that he must be very solitary; it must be a melancholy thing to be a twin left alone.

‘And Edmund, dear Edmund, was always so kind and so fond of Gilbert!’ said Lucy. ‘You would not have thought they were twins, Edmund was so much the tallest and strongest. It seemed so odd that Gilbert should have got over it, when he did not. Should you like to hear all about it, mamma?’

It was Albinia’s great wish to lift that dark veil, and Lucy began, with as much seriousness and sadness as could co-exist with the satisfaction and importance of having to give such a narration, and exciting emotion and pity. It was remarkable how she managed to make herself the heroine of the story, though she had been sent out of the house, and had escaped the infection. She spoke in phrases that showed that she had so often told the story as to have a set form, caught from her elders, but still it had a deep and intrinsic interest for the bride, that made her sit gazing into the fire, pressing Lucy’s hand, and now and then sighing and shuddering slightly as she heard how there had been a bad fever prevailing in that lower part of the town, and how the two boys were both unwell one damp, hot autumn morning, and Lucy dwelt on the escape it had been that she had not kissed them before going to school. Sophy had sickened the same day, and after the tedious three weeks, when father and mother were spent with attendance on the three, Edmund, after long delirium, had suddenly sunk, just as they had hopes of him; and the same message that told Lucy of her brother’s death, told her of the severe illness of both parents.

The disease had done the work rapidly on the mother’s exhausted frame, and she was buried a week after her boy. Lucy had seen the procession from the window, and thought it necessary to tell how she had cried.

Mr. Kendal’s had been a long illness; the first knowledge of his loss had caused a relapse, and his recovery had long been doubtful. As soon as the children were able to move, they were sent with Miss Meadows to Ramsgate, and Lucy had joined them there.

‘The day before I went, I saw papa,’ she said. ‘I had gone home for some things that I was to take, and his room door was open, so he saw me on the stairs, and called me, for there was no fear of infection then. Oh, he was so changed! his hair all cut off, and his cheeks hollow, and he was quite trembling, as he lay back on pillows in the great arm-chair. You can’t think what a shock it was to me to see him in such a state. He held out his arms, and I flung mine round his neck, and sobbed and cried. And he just said, so faintly, “Take her away, Maria, I cannot bear it.” I assure you I was quite hysterical.’

‘You must have wished for more self-command,’ said Albinia, disturbed by Lucy’s evident pleasure in having made a scene.

‘Oh, but it was such a shock, and such a thing to see the house all empty and forlorn, with the windows open, and everything so still! Miss Belmarche cried too, and said she did not wonder my feelings overcame me, and she did not see papa.’

‘Ah! Lucy,’ said Albinia, fervently, ‘how we must try to make him happy after all that he has gone through!’

‘That is what grandmamma said when she got his letter. “I would be glad of anything,” she said, “that would bring back a smile to him.” And Aunt Maria said she had done her best for him, but he must consult his own happiness; and so I say. When people talk to me, I say that papa is quite at liberty to consult his own happiness.’

‘Thank you.’

Lucy did not understand the tone, and went on patronizing. ‘And if they say you look younger than they expected, I don’t object to that at all. I had rather you were not as old as Aunt Maria, or Miss Belmarche.’

‘Who thinks me so young?’

‘Oh! Aunt Maria, and grandmamma, and Mrs. Osborn, and all; but I don’t mind that, it is only Sophy who says you look like a girl. Aunt Maria says Sophy has an unmanageable temper.’

‘Don’t you think you can let me find that out for myself?’

‘I thought you wanted me to tell you about everybody.’

‘Ah! but tell me of the good in your brother and sister.’

‘I don’t know how,’ said Lucy. ‘Gilbert is so tiresome, and so is Sophy. I heard Mary telling Jane, “I’m sure the new missus will have a heavy handful of those two.”’

‘And what of yourself?’ said Albinia.

‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said Lucy, modestly.

Mr. Kendal came in, and as Albinia looked at his pensive brow, she was oppressed by the thought of his sufferings in that dreary convalescence. At night, when she looked from her window, the fog hung white, like mildew over the pond, and she could not reason herself out of a spectral haunting fancy that sickness lurked in the heavy, misty atmosphere. She dreamt of it and the four babies, started, awoke, and had to recall all her higher trust to enable her vigour to chase off the oppressive imagination.

CHAPTER III

Fog greeted Mrs. Kendal’s eyes as she rose, and she resolved to make an attack on the pond without loss of time. But Mr. Kendal was absorbed nearly all breakfast-time in a letter from India, containing a scrap in some uncouth character. As he finished his last cup of tea, he looked up and said, ‘A letter from my old friend Penrose, of Bombay—an inscription in the Salsette caves.’

‘Have you seen the Salsette caves?

‘Yes.’

She was longing to hear about them, but his horse was announced.

‘You said you would be engaged in the morning while I ride out, Albinia?’ he said, ‘I shall return before luncheon. Gilbert, you had better go at once to Mr. Bowles. I shall order your pony to be ready when you come back.’

There was not a word of remonstrance, though the boy looked very disconsolate, and began to murmur the moment his father had gone. Albinia, who had regarded protection at a dentist’s one of the offices of the head of a family, though dismayed at the task, told Gilbert that she would come with him in a moment. The girls exclaimed that no one thought of going with him, and fearing she had put an affront on his manliness, she asked what he would like, but could get no answer, only when Lucy scolded him for lingering, he said, ‘I thought she was going with me.’

‘Amiable,’ thought Albinia, as she ran up to put on her bonnet; ‘but I suppose toothache puts people out of the pale of civilization. And if he is thankless, is not that treating me more like a mother?’

Perhaps he had accepted her escort in hopes of deferring the evil hour, for he seemed discomfited to see her so quickly ready, and not grateful to his sisters, who hurried them by saying that Mr. Bowles would be gone out upon his rounds.

Mr. Bowles was amazed at the sight of Mrs. Kendal, and so elaborate in compliments and assurances that Mrs. Bowles would do herself the honour of calling, that Albinia, pitying Gilbert, called his attention back.

With him the apothecary was peremptory and facetious. ‘He had expected that he should soon see him after his papa’s return!’ And with a ‘soon be over,’ he set him down, and Albinia bravely stood a desperate wringing of her hand at the tug of war. She was glad she had come, for the boy suffered a good deal, and was faint, and Mr. Bowles pronounced his mouth in no state for a ride to Tremblam.

‘I must go,’ said Gilbert, as they walked home, ‘I wish papa would listen to anything.’

‘He would not wish you to hurt yourself.’

‘When papa says a thing—’ began Gilbert.

‘Well, Gilbert, you are quite right, and I hope you don’t think I mean to teach you disobedience. But I do desire you, on my own responsibility, not to go and catch an inflammation in your jaw. I’ll undertake papa.’

Gilbert at once became quite another creature. He discoursed so much, that she had to make him restore the handkerchief to his mouth; he held open the gate, showed her a shoal of minnows, and tried to persuade her to come round the garden before going in, but she clapped her hands at him, and hunted him back into the warm room, much impressed and delighted by his implicit obedience to his father. With Lucy and Sophy, his remaining seemed likewise to make a great sensation; they looked at Mrs. Kendal and whispered, and were evidently curious as to the result of her audacity. Albinia, who had grown up with her brother Maurice and cousin Frederick, was more used to boys than to girls, and was already more at ease with her son than her daughters.

Gilbert lent a ready hand with hammer and chisel, and boxes were opened, to the great delight and admiration of the girls. They were all very happy and busy setting things to rights, but Albinia was in difficulty how to bestow her books. There was an unaccountable scarcity both of books and book-cases; none were to be seen except that, in a chiffoniere in the drawing-room, there was a row in gilded bindings, chiefly Pope, Gray, and the like; and one which Albinia took out had pages which stuck together, a little pale blue string, faded at the end, and in the garlanded fly-leaf the inscription, ‘To Miss Lucy Meadows, the reward of good conduct, December 20th, 1822.’ The book seemed rather surprised at being opened, and Albinia let it close itself as Lucy said, ‘Those are poor mamma’s books, all the others are in the study. Come in, and I’ll show you.’

She threw open the door, and Albinia entered. The study was shaded with a mass of laurels that kept out the sun, and made it look chill and sad, and the air in it was close. The round library-table was loaded with desks, pocket-books, and papers, the mantelpiece was covered with letters, and book-shelves mounted to the ceiling, filled with the learned and the poetical of new and old times.

Over the fireplace hung what it needed not Lucy’s whisper to point out, as ‘Poor mamma’s picture.’ It represented a very pretty girl, with dark eyes, brilliant colour, and small cherry mouth, painted in the exaggerated style usually called ‘ridiculously like.’

Albinia’s first feeling was that there was nothing in herself that could atone for the loss of so fair a creature, and the thought became more oppressive as she looked at a niche in the wall, holding a carved sandal-wood work-box, with a silver watch lying on it.

‘Poor Edmund’s watch,’ said Lucy. ‘It was given to him for a reward just before he was ill.’

Albinia tried to recover composure by reading the titles of the books. Suddenly, Lucy started and exclaimed, ‘Come away. There he is!’

‘Why come away?’ said Albinia.

‘I would not have him find me there for all the world.’

In all her vexation and dismay, Albinia could not help thinking of Bluebeard’s closet. Her inclination was to stay where she was, and take her chance of losing her head, yet she felt as if she could not bear to be found invading a sanctuary of past recollections, and was relieved to find that it was a false alarm, though not relieved by the announcement that Admiral and Mrs. Osborn and the Miss Osborns were in the drawing-room.

‘Before luncheon—too bad!’ she exclaimed, as she hurried upstairs to wash off the dust of unpacking.

Ere she could hurry down, there was another inundation streaming across the hall, Mrs. Drury and three Miss Drurys, who, as she remembered, when they began to kiss her, were some kind of cousins.

There was talk, but Albinia could not give entire attention; she was watching for Mr. Kendal’s return, that she might guard Gilbert from his displeasure, and the instant she heard him, she sprang up, and flew into the hall. He could not help brightening at the eager welcome, but when she told him of Mr. Bowles’ opinion, he looked graver, and said, ‘I fear you must not always attach credit to all Gilbert’s reports.’

‘Mr. Bowles told me himself that he must run no risk of inflammation.’

‘You saw Mr. Bowles?’

‘I went with Gilbert.’

‘You? I never thought of your imposing so unpleasant a task on yourself. I fear the boy has been trespassing on your kindness.’

‘No, indeed, he never asked me, but—’ with a sort of laugh to hide the warmth excited by his pleased, grateful look, ‘I thought it all in the day’s work, only natural—’

She would have given anything to have had time to enjoy his epanchement de coeur at those words, bit she was obliged to add, ‘Alas! there’s all the world in the drawing-room!’

‘Who?’

‘Osborns and Drurys.’

‘Do you want me?’

‘I ran away on the plea of calling you.’

‘I’ll never do so again,’ was her inward addition, as his countenance settled into the accustomed fixed look of abstraction, and as an unwilling victim he entered the room with her, and the visitors were ‘dreadful enough’ to congratulate him.

Albinia knew that it must be so unpleasant to him, that she blushed up to the roots of her hair, and could not look at anybody.

When she recovered, the first comers were taking leave, but the second set stayed on and on till past luncheon-time, and far past her patience, before the room was at last cleared.

Gilbert hurried in, and was received by his father with, ‘You are very much obliged to her!’

‘Indeed I am,’ said Gilbert, in a winning, pleasant manner.

‘I don’t want you to be,’ said Albinia, affectionately laying her arm on his shoulder. ‘And now for luncheon—I pitied you, poor fellow; I thought you must have been famished.’

‘Anything not to have all the Drurys at luncheon,’ said Gilbert, confidentially, ‘I had begun to wish myself at Tremblam.’

‘By the bye,’ said Mr. Kendal, waking as he sat down at the bottom of the table, ‘how was it that the Drurys did not stay to luncheon?’

‘Was that what they were waiting for?’ exclaimed Albinia. ‘Poor people, I had no notion of that.’

‘They do have luncheon here in general,’ said Mr. Kendal, as if not knowing exactly how it came to pass.

‘O yes,’ said Lucy; ‘Sarah Anne asked me whether we ate wedding-cake every day.’

‘Poor Miss Sarah Anne!’ said Albinia, laughing. ‘But one cannot help feeling inhospitable when people come so unconscionably early, and cut up all one’s morning.’

The door was again besieged by visitors, just as they were all going out to make the round of the garden, and it was not till half-past four that the succession ceased, and Albinia was left to breathe freely, and remember how often Maurice had called her to order for intolerance of morning calls.

‘And not the only people I cared to see,’ she said, ‘the Dusautoys and Nugents. But they have too much mercy to call the first day.’

Mr. Kendal looked as if his instinct were drawing him study-wards, but Albinia hung on his arm, and made him come into the garden. Though devoid of Winifred’s gardening tastes, she was dismayed at the untended look of the flower-beds. The laurels were too high, and seemed to choke the narrow space, and the turf owed its verdant appearance to damp moss. She had made but few steps before the water squished under her feet, and impelled her to exclaim, ‘What a pity this pond should not be filled up!’

‘Filled up!—’

‘Yes, it would be so much less damp. One might drain it off into the river, and then we should get rid of the fog.’

And she began actively to demonstrate the convenient slope, and the beautiful flower-bed that might be made in its place. Mr. Kendal answered with a few assenting sounds and complacent looks, and Albinia, accustomed to a brother with whom to assent was to act, believed the matter was in train, and that pond and fever would be annihilated.

The garden opened into a meadow with a causeway leading to a canal bank, where there was a promising country walk, but the cruel visitors had left no time for exploring, and Albinia had to return home and hurry up her arrangements before there was space to turn round in her room—even then it was not what Winifred could have seen without making a face.

Mr. Kendal had read aloud to his wife in the evening during the stay at the sea-side, and she was anxious not to let the habit drop. He liked it, and read beautifully, and she thought it good for the children. She therefore begged him to read, catching him on the way to his study, and coaxing him to stay no longer than to find a book. He brought Schlegel’s Philosophy of History. She feared that it was above the young ones, but it was delightful to herself, and the custom had better be established before it was perilled by attempts to adapt it to the children. Lucy and Sophy seemed astonished and displeased, and their whispers had to be silenced, Gilbert learnt his lessons apart. Albinia rallied her spirits, and insisted to herself that she did not feel discouraged.

Monday had gone, or rather Albinia had been robbed of it by visitors—now for a vigorous Tuesday. Her unpacking and her setting to rights were not half over, but as the surface was habitable, she resolved to finish at her leisure, and sacrifice no more mornings of study.

So after she had lingered at the door, to delight Gilbert by admiring his pony, she returned to the dining-room, where the girls were loading a small table in the window with piles of books and exercises, and Lucy was standing, looking all eagerness to show off her drawings.

‘Yes, my dear, but first we had better read. I have been talking to your papa, and we have settled that on Wednesdays and Fridays we will go to church; but on these days we will begin by reading the Psalms and Lessons.’

‘Oh,’ said Lucy, ‘we never do that, except when we are at grandmamma’s.’

‘Pray are you too old or too young for it?’ said Albinia.

‘We did it to please grandmamma,’ said Sophy.

‘Now you will do it to please me,’ said Albinia, ‘if for no better reason. Fetch your Bibles and Prayerbooks.’

‘We shall never have time for our studies, I assure you, mamma,’ objected Lucy.

‘That is not your concern,’ said Albinia, her spirit rising at the girls’ opposition. ‘I wish for obedience.’

Lucy went, Sophy leant against the table like a post. Albinia regretted that the first shot should have been fired for such a cause, and sat perplexing herself whether it were worse to give way, or to force the girls to read Holy Scripture in such a mood.

Lucy came flying down with the four books in her hands, and began officiously opening them before her sister, and exhorting her not to give way to sullenness—she ought to like to read the Bible—which of course made Sophy look crosser. The desire to establish her authority conquered the scruple about reverence. Albinia set them to read, and suffered for it. Lucy road flippantly; Sophy in the hoarse, dull, dogged voice of a naughty boy. She did not dare to expostulate, lest she should exasperate the tempers that she had roused.

‘Never mind,’ she thought, ‘when the institution is fixed, they will be more amenable.’

She tried a little examination afterwards, but not one answer was to be extracted from Sophy, and Lucy knew far less than the first class at Fairmead, and made her replies wide of the mark, with an air of satisfaction that nearly overthrew the young step-mother’s patience.

When Albinia took her Bible upstairs, she gave Sophy time to say what Lucy reported instantly on her entrance.

‘Dear me, mamma, here is Sophy declaring that you ought to be a charity-schoolmistress. You wont be angry with her, but it is so funny!’

‘If you were at my charity school, Lucy,’ said Albinia, ‘the first lesson I should give you would be against telling tales.’

Lucy subsided.

Albinia turned to Sophy. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘perhaps I pressed this on when you were not prepared for it, but I have always been used to think of it as a duty.’

Sophy made no answer, but her moody attitude relaxed, and Albinia took comfort in the hope that she might have been gracious if she had known how to set about it.

‘I suppose Miss Belmarche is a Roman Catholic,’ she said, wishing to account for this wonderful ignorance, and addressing herself to Sophy; but Lucy, whom she thought she had effectually put down, was up again in a moment like a Jack-in-a-box.

‘O yes, but not Genevieve. Her papa made it his desire that she should be brought up a Protestant. Wasn’t it funny? You know Genevieve is Madame Belmarche’s grand-daughter, and Mr. Durant was a dancing-master.’

‘Madame Belmarche’s father and brother were guillotined,’ continued Sophy.

‘Ah! then she is an emigrant?’

‘Yes. Miss Belmarche has always kept school here. Our own mamma, and Aunt Maria went to school to her, and Miss Celeste Belmarche married Mr. Durant, a dancing-master—she was French teacher in a school in London where he taught, and Madame Belmarche did not approve, for she and her husband were something very grand in France, so they waited and waited ever so long, and when at last they did marry, they were quite old, and she died very soon; and they say he never was happy again, and pined away till he really did die of grief, and so Genevieve came to her grandmamma to be brought up.’

‘Poor child! How old is she?’

‘Fifteen,’ said Lucy. ‘She teaches in the school. She is not at all pretty, and such a queer little thing.’

‘Was her father French?’

‘No,’ said Sophy.

‘Yes,’ said Lucy. ‘You know nothing about it, Sophy. He was French, but of the Protestant French sort, that came to England a great many years ago, when they ran away from the Sicilian Vespers, or the Edict of Nantes, I don’t remember which; only the Spitalfields weavers have something to do with it. However, at any rate Genevieve has got something in a drawer up in her own room that she is very secret about, and wont show to anybody.’