Part 2, Chapter VIII.

Part 2, Chapter VIII.Going to School.All the preparations for school had been made, and it was the day before I was to leave. My trunks—I had several now—were packed. Augusta was coming too, and so was Hermione. Hermione had come to spend the last evening with us in the old house behind the great college. She was very much interested and highly pleased.The last fortnight of my time at home had gone on wings. Lady Lilian St. Leger had lifted me into a new world. She was a daring, bright, true-hearted girl. She did not mind treating me with a sort of playful lightness which was very refreshing after the stifling time I had spent in that awful drawing-room; but she also had said good-bye.“We shall meet in the holidays,” she said. “I shall see you sometimes. I am to come out as soon as ever I am presented, and I’ll be presented at the first Drawing-room. After that it will be nothing but rush and tumult; I’ll be wishing myself dead all the time, for there will be no hope of anything. I am going to make up my mind to accept the first man who proposes for me.”“Oh, but you won’t do that!” I said, for I had very primitive and very sacred ideas on such topics.“Oh, just to get rid of the thing! I only trust he’ll be young and poor and ugly. If he is young and poor and ugly, and I fall madly in love with him, there’ll be such a rumpus, and that would be a rare bit of fun. But dear, darling mamma will have to give way, because I can always make her do what I like.”“But your father?” I said.“Oh, I’ll manage him too.”Thus she talked and chattered; but she was not out yet. She was very good-natured, and told me a great deal about the school.“I do envy your going there,” she said. “I wish I was fifteen. And you are so jolly honest-looking and so downright plain. I do think you are unfairly equipped for this life, Dumps.”She would never call me anything else now; I was Dumps to her—her darling, plain, practical, jolly Dumps. That was how she spoke of me. She had written to the girls whom she knew at the school, and had told me to be sure to introduce myself as her very dearest friend, as her newest and dearest.“They will embrace you; they will take you into their bosoms for my sake,” she said.I am afraid I was very much enamoured of Lady Lilian; she was the type of girl who would excite the admiration of any one. Even Hermione, who knew her quite well, and whom I had liked in many ways until I met Lady Lilian, seemed commonplace and spiritless beside her.But Hermione, Augusta, and I were to go to school together. Of course we would be friends. A lady, a special chaperon, was to take us across the Channel; we would start on the following morning, and should arrive in Paris in the evening. I was excited now it came to the point Hannah met me on the last evening as I was going upstairs. She was standing just beside a corner of my own landing. She sprang out on me.“Hannah,” I said, “you did give me a start.”She laid her hand on my arm.“Let me come into your room with you,” she said.I asked her to do so. She came up and spoke to me emphatically.“You are going. When you go she will go too.”“She?”“Your own mother. She won’t stay another minute. The house will belong to the new queen; but Hannah won’t put up with it. I gave her notice this morning.”“Hannah, you didn’t.”“I did, my dear—I did. I said, ‘You are turning the child out, and the old woman goes too.’”“Then you won’t stay for the sake of the boys?”“No, I won’t; they can manage for themselves, even Master Charley and even beautiful Master Alex. I will say, anyhow, she wasn’t a bit unkind. She was very nice; I will say that for her. She’s a very nice woman, and under other circumstances I’d be inclined to like her. But there! she’s the new queen, and my heart is with the old one.”Poor Hannah burst into tears; I had never seen her so overcome before.“You will come back belonging to the house as it will be in the future. You are too young not to grow up in the new house; but I’m too old, child. I’ll never forget the old ways.”“Hannah, fudge!” said a voice behind; and turning round, I was amazed, and I must say rather disgusted, to see my brother Charley.“Look here,” he said, “this is all stuff and nonsense. We are as jolly as we can be, and our step-mother is as good as gold, and why should we make mischief? As to the old times—now I’ll tell you what it is, Hannah, they were detestable.”Charley made his bow, winking at me and vanishing.“Just like him,” said Hannah.“There’s a good deal of truth in what he says, Hannah.”“Well, I like the old ways best,” said Hannah.Poor old thing, I could not but pet her and comfort her. She gave me her address. She was going to live with a cousin, and if ever I wanted a home, and was disposed to quarrel with my step-mother, she would take me in—that she would. As I had no intention of quarrelling with my step-mother—for it is quite impossible for any one to have a completely one-sided quarrel—I told Hannah that all I could hope to do in the future was to visit her a good deal. In the end I told her that I would write her long letters from Paris, which quieted her a good bit. She kissed me, and when she went away I did feel, somehow, that the old life was really gone.The old life! It quite went the next morning when I found myself on board the steamer which was to convey me from Dover to Calais. I stood with Hermione on one side and Augusta on the other, looking at the fast-receding waves as the gallant boat plied its way through them. Our chaperon, a dull, quiet-looking woman, who only spoke broken English, took little or no notice of us. Augusta’s eyes were fixed on the distant horizon. Occasionally I heard her murmuring lines of verse to herself. Once she glanced at me, and I saw that her eyes were full of tears.“What is it?” I said.She immediately repeated with great emphasis:“And where are they? And where art thou,My country?”“Oh,” I cried, “don’t say any more! We are not in the humour for poetry.”“Of course we’re not,” said Hermione, glancing at her.“I was quoting,” said Augusta. “I was thinking, not about what Lord Byron thought when he spoke of ancient Greece, but of all that I was leaving behind in London.”“And what are you leaving behind that is so specially valuable, Augusta?” I asked.“Your father’s lectures,” she replied. She turned once more and looked at the horizon.“Don’t worry her,” said Hermione in a low tone to me.“I wonder if she’ll ever get over it,” I said.Hermione and I began to pace slowly up and down the deck.“I cannot imagine why my step-mother was so anxious that she should come with us,” I said.“Because she felt that it was absolutely essential that Augusta should see another side of life. Dear, dear, I do feel excited! I wonder how we shall like the life. Don’t frown, Dumps; you surely needn’t worry about Augusta. She has made a kind of king of your father. She believes him to be all that is heroic and noble and majestic in life. It is really a most innocent admiration; let her keep it.”“Yes, of course, if she likes,” I said.The air was cold. I wrapped the warm fur cloak which my step-mother had insisted upon giving me for the voyage tightly round me, and sat down on one of the deck-seats. By-and-by Augusta tottered forward.“It is strange how difficult it is to use your sea-legs,” she said.She sprawled on to the seat by my side. Suddenly the vessel gave a lurch, and she found herself lying on the deck. A sailor rushed forward, picked her up, and advised the young lady to sit down; the wind was a little fresher and the vessel would sway a trifle. He brought a tarpaulin and wrapped it round us three. Augusta was on one side of me. Presently she pressed my hand.“You are thenextbest,” she said, gazing at me with pathetic eyes.“Next what?” I said.“You are his daughter.”“I will try and be friendly with you, Augusta; but I do bar one thing,” was my immediate comment.“And what is that?”“Nonsense. You must try and talk sense.”She smiled very gently, and taking my hand within her own, stroked it.“He also,” she said after a pause, “is very determined. In fact, I cannot with truth say that he has ever in his life given me what I could call a civil word. Now, you are like him; you are exceedingly blunt. The blunter you are, the more you resemble him.”“Oh, good gracious! then I suppose I shall have to be civil.”“I beseech of you, don’t; keep as like him as you can.”“If you mean for a single moment that Dumps is like her father in appearance, you are much mistaken,” said Hermione, bending across me to speak to Augusta.“She is like him neither in body nor in mind.”“But she has a trifle of his moral force,” replied Augusta, with great majesty; and then, finding that neither Hermione nor I was at all in sympathy with her, she satisfied herself with remaining silent and leaning against my shoulder. Perhaps she thought I was imparting to her some of my moral force. I really felt a savage desire to push her away.At last we landed, and found ourselves in a first-class compartment in the Paris train, and a few minutes afterwards we were on our journey. We arrived there in the evening. Then we found ourselves in an omnibus which was sent to meet us from the school, and were on our way to that home of all the virtues just beyond the Champs Élysées. My heart was beating high. I was full of suppressed anxiety. Hermione once or twice touched my hand. She was also very excited; she was wondering what sort of life lay before her. Augusta, on the other hand, was utterly irresponsive. She did not make one remark with regard to gay, beautiful, brilliant Paris, which looked, as it always does at this hour, full of marvellous witchery, so brilliantly lighted up were the broad streets, so altogether exhilarating was the tone of the bracing air.Augusta sat huddled up in one corner of the omnibus, while Hermione and I got as close to the door as we could, and gazed out of the window, which was wide-open, exclaiming at each turn as we drove along. The Champs Élysées flashed into view; we drove on, and presently turned into a very broad street, and pulled up with a jerk before a house which seemed to have a balcony to each window, and which was brilliantly lit from attic to cellar.Our companion, the lady who had brought us, now said something in excellent French, and we got out of the omnibus and followed her up a paved path and through an open doorway into a wide hall. Here a servant appeared, who was told to take us to our rooms. We followed her up some stairs, which were white marble and were uncarpeted. We passed a wide landing where there were some marble figures in the corners, and large palm-trees standing beside them; then again past folding-doors, and through a landing with more marble figures and more palms, until at last we entered through two doors, which were flung open wide, into a pretty little sitting-room. Why do I say little? The room was lofty, and was so simply furnished that it looked much larger than it was. The floor was covered with oak parquetry, and was polished to the most slippery degree. There were a couple of rugs here and there, but no carpet. In the centre of the room was a table covered with a white cloth, and containing knives, forks, glasses, and a bunch of flowers rather carelessly arranged in a vase in the middle. There were heavy chairs in the Louis-Quinze style, with a great deal of gilt about them, and a huge mirror, also with gilt, let into the wall at one side; and exactly opposite the wall was a door, which led into three small bedrooms, all communicating each with the other.“These are your apartments, young ladies,” said the governess who had taken us upstairs. “This is your sitting-room, where to-night you will have your supper. You will not see your companions—or I think not—until the morning. You will be glad to retire to rest, doubtless, as you must have had a long journey. Your supper will come up in a moment or two. If you give your trunks to Justine she will unpack them and put your things away. Ah! here is the bell; if you will ring it when you want anything, Justine, who is the maid whose special duty it is to wait on you, will attend the summons.”The governess turned to go away.“But, please,” called out Hermione as she was closing the door, “what are we to call you?”“Mademoiselle Wrex.”We thanked her, and she vanished. Augusta stood in the middle of the room and clasped her hands.“Well, now, I call this jolly!” I said.“Delightful! And how quaint!” said Hermione. “I never thought we should have a sitting-room.”“But there isn’t a book,” remarked Augusta.“Oh, we don’t want books to-night, Augusta. Now, do lean on my moral strength and forget everything unpleasant,” I said.“Oh! do look out of the window; here’s a balcony,” cried Hermione. “Let us go out on it when we have had supper.”She pushed back the curtains, opened the window, and the next minute she was standing on the little balcony looking down into the crowded street.“Oh! and that house opposite; we can see right into its rooms. What fun! What fun! I do call this life!” cried the girl.“We had better go and unlock our trunks; remember we are at school,” I said.“How unlike you, Dumps, to think of anything sensible!” was Hermione’s remark.We went into our rooms.“I am going to ring the bell for Justine,” said Hermione.She did so, and a very pretty girl dressed in French style appeared. She could not speak English, but our home-made French was sufficient for the occasion. We managed to convey to her what we wanted, and she supplied us with hot water, took our keys, and immediately began to unpack our trunks and to put away our belongings.“You shall have the room next to the sitting-room,” I said to Hermione.“Very well,” she answered.“I will take the next,” I said; “and, Augusta, will you have that one?”“It’s all the same to me,” said Augusta.In less than half-an-hour we felt ourselves more or less established in our new quarters.“Now,” said Justine, becoming much animated, “you will want, youpauvre petites, some of the so nécessaire refreshment.”She rang the bell with energy, and a man appeared bearing chocolate, cakes of different descriptions, and sandwiches. We sat down and made a merry meal. Even Augusta was pleased. She forgot the absence of books; she even forgot how far she was from the Professor. As to her poor mother, I do not think she even gave her a serious thought Hermione and I laughed and chatted. Finally we went and stood on the balcony, and Augusta retired to her own room.“Now this is a new era; what will it do for us both?” said Hermione.“I don’t know,” I said.“Aren’t you happy, Dumps?”“Yes, I am a little; but I don’t suppose I am expected to take things very seriously.”“It is a great change for me,” said Hermione, “from the regularity of the life at home.”“I suppose it is,” I said; but then I added, “You cannot expect me to feel about it in that way.”“Why so?”“It seems to me,” I continued, “that I have been for the last few months taken off my feet and whirled into all sorts of new conditions. We were so poor, so straitened; we seemed to have none of what you would call the good things of life. Then all of a sudden Fortune’s wheel turned and we were—I suppose—rich. But still—”“Don’t say you prefer the old life.”“No—not really. I know she is so good; but you must admit that it is a great change for me.”“I know it is; but you ought to be thankful.”“That is it; I don’t think I am. And what is more,” I continued, “I don’t think this is the right school for Augusta. There is just a possibility that I may be shaped and moulded and twisted into a sort of fine lady; but nothing will ever make Augusta commonplace, nor will anything make you commonplace. Oh dear! there is some one knocking at the door.”The knock was repeated. We said, “Come in!” and a girl with a very curly head of dark hair, bright eyes to match, and a radiant face, first peeped at us, then entered, shut the door with a noisy vehemence, and came towards as with both her hands extended.Half-way across the room she deliberately shut her eyes.“Now, I wonder which of you I shall feel first. One is Dumps and the other Hermione. I am expected to adore Dumps because she is so jolly and plain and sensible and—and awkward; and I am expected to worship Hermione because she is exactly the reverse. Now—ah! I know—this is Hermione!”She clasped her arms round my somewhat stout waist.“Wrong—wrong!” I cried.She opened her eyes and uttered a merry laugh.“I have been introduced to you,” she said, “by special letter from my friend Lilian St. Leger. And youareDumps?”“Of course,” I said.“Good! You do look jolly. I am Rosalind Mayhew. I am a great friend of Lilian’s. Of course, I am younger than she is—I am a year younger—and I am going to be at school for another year, so I’ll see you through, Dumps; Lilian has asked me to.”“Sit down and tell us about every thing,” I said. “You know we are such strangers.”“Washed up on this inhospitable shore, we scarcely know what we are to do with ourselves, or what savages we are to meet,” said Hermione very merrily.“Then I’ll just tell you everything I can. You know, Mademoiselle Wrex would be wild if she knew that I had come up to see you this evening. She said I was not to do so, but to leave you in peace. Well, I could not help myself. I slipped out to come here, and I told Elfreda and Riki and Fhemie and Hortense that I could not resist it any longer.”“What queer names!” I said.“Oh, Riki—she’s a German comtesse; and Elfreda is a baroness; but we always call them just Riki and Elfreda. They are very jolly girls. Then as to Fhemie, she is more English than I am; and Hortense is French of the French. There are all sorts of girls at our school. The Dutch girls are some of the nicest. I will introduce you to them. Then there are Swedes, and several Americans. The Americans are very racy.”“How many girls are there altogether at the school?” I asked.“Well, between twenty and thirty. You see, the Baroness Gablestein is exceedingly particular.”“Who is she?”“My dear Dumps! You don’t mean to say that you have come to this school without knowing the name of our head-mistress?”“A baroness? Gablestein?” I exclaimed.“Yes; she really represents a sort of all-round nationality. To begin with, she is an Englishwoman herself by birth—that is, on one side. Her mother was English, but her father was French. Then she married a German baron, whose mother was a Dutchwoman, and whose grandmother was Italian. Her husband died, and she found, poor baroness! that she had not quite enough to live on, and so, as she was exceedingly well educated and had many aristocratic connections, she thought she would start a school. Her name in full is Baroness von Gablestein. She is most charming. She talks excellent English, but she also talks French and German and Italian like a native. She has a fair idea of the Dutch tongue, and is exceedingly kind to her Dutch connections; but I think her most valued pupils hail from the island home. But there! I don’t think I ought to stay any longer to-night. I don’t want Comtesse Riki to become curious and to poke her aristocratic little nose in here. She is a very jolly girl, and as nice as ever she can be; still, she is not English, you know. Oh, you’ll find all sides of character here. I can’t tell you how funny it is, particularly with regard to the French and German girls; they are so interested about theirdotand their future husbands and all the rest. I tell you itislife in this place! We do have good times; it isn’t a bit like a regular school. You see all sorts and conditions—good, bad, and indifferent; but I suppose the good preponderate. Now kiss me, Dumps. You will be quite a fresh variety. I believe you are blunt and honest—but, oh, don’t break the Salviati glass!”“How very wrong of Lilian to have told you that story!” I said.“My dear good creature, do you think that Lilian St. Leger could keep anything to herself? She is about the maddest young woman I ever came across; but we do miss her at school. Her name will be ‘Open sesame’ to you to every heart in the place. She is just the nicest and most bewitching of creatures. I only wish she was back.”“She is coming out in about a month,” I said.“Poor thing, how she always did hate the idea!”“She won’t when the time comes,” said Hermione.“Once she is plunged into that fun she will enjoy it as well as another.”“I never should,” I said.Rosalind glanced at me and laughed.“Oh, perhaps you’ll change too,” she said. “Well, you look awfully nice. Your breakfast will be brought to your rooms to-morrow morning sharp at seven o’clock. We havedéjeunerat twelve, afternoon tea at four, dinner at seven. The rest of the day is divided up into all sorts of strange and odd patterns, totally different from English life. But, of course, the meals are all-important.”“Why,” I said, “I did not think you were so greedy.”“Nor are we; but you see, dear, during meals we each speak the language of our native country, and I can tell you there is a babel sometimes when the Baroness is not at the head of her table. All the rest of the time the English girlsmusttalk French, German, or Italian; and the French ones must talk English, German, or Italian; and the German girls must talk French, English, or Italian; and so on, and so on.”“Oh, you confuse me,” I said. “How can any one girl talk three languages at once?”“Day about, or week about—I forget which,” said Rosalind. “Now, good-night, good-night.”She vanished.“I declare I am dead-tired,” I said, and I sank down on the sofa.“What a good thing Augusta wasn’t here!” said Hermione.“Yes; she wouldn’t have understood a bit,” I said.I went to Augusta’s room that night before I lay down to rest. She was sound asleep in the dress she had travelled in. She had not even taken the trouble to put a wrap over her. She looked tired, and was murmuring Latin verses in her sleep.“It is not the right place for her; she will never, never get on with these baronesses and comtesses, and all this medley of foreign life,” I could not help saying to myself.I covered her up, but did not attempt to awake her; and then I went to my own room, got into bed, and went to sleep with a whirl of emotion and wonder filling my brain.

All the preparations for school had been made, and it was the day before I was to leave. My trunks—I had several now—were packed. Augusta was coming too, and so was Hermione. Hermione had come to spend the last evening with us in the old house behind the great college. She was very much interested and highly pleased.

The last fortnight of my time at home had gone on wings. Lady Lilian St. Leger had lifted me into a new world. She was a daring, bright, true-hearted girl. She did not mind treating me with a sort of playful lightness which was very refreshing after the stifling time I had spent in that awful drawing-room; but she also had said good-bye.

“We shall meet in the holidays,” she said. “I shall see you sometimes. I am to come out as soon as ever I am presented, and I’ll be presented at the first Drawing-room. After that it will be nothing but rush and tumult; I’ll be wishing myself dead all the time, for there will be no hope of anything. I am going to make up my mind to accept the first man who proposes for me.”

“Oh, but you won’t do that!” I said, for I had very primitive and very sacred ideas on such topics.

“Oh, just to get rid of the thing! I only trust he’ll be young and poor and ugly. If he is young and poor and ugly, and I fall madly in love with him, there’ll be such a rumpus, and that would be a rare bit of fun. But dear, darling mamma will have to give way, because I can always make her do what I like.”

“But your father?” I said.

“Oh, I’ll manage him too.”

Thus she talked and chattered; but she was not out yet. She was very good-natured, and told me a great deal about the school.

“I do envy your going there,” she said. “I wish I was fifteen. And you are so jolly honest-looking and so downright plain. I do think you are unfairly equipped for this life, Dumps.”

She would never call me anything else now; I was Dumps to her—her darling, plain, practical, jolly Dumps. That was how she spoke of me. She had written to the girls whom she knew at the school, and had told me to be sure to introduce myself as her very dearest friend, as her newest and dearest.

“They will embrace you; they will take you into their bosoms for my sake,” she said.

I am afraid I was very much enamoured of Lady Lilian; she was the type of girl who would excite the admiration of any one. Even Hermione, who knew her quite well, and whom I had liked in many ways until I met Lady Lilian, seemed commonplace and spiritless beside her.

But Hermione, Augusta, and I were to go to school together. Of course we would be friends. A lady, a special chaperon, was to take us across the Channel; we would start on the following morning, and should arrive in Paris in the evening. I was excited now it came to the point Hannah met me on the last evening as I was going upstairs. She was standing just beside a corner of my own landing. She sprang out on me.

“Hannah,” I said, “you did give me a start.”

She laid her hand on my arm.

“Let me come into your room with you,” she said.

I asked her to do so. She came up and spoke to me emphatically.

“You are going. When you go she will go too.”

“She?”

“Your own mother. She won’t stay another minute. The house will belong to the new queen; but Hannah won’t put up with it. I gave her notice this morning.”

“Hannah, you didn’t.”

“I did, my dear—I did. I said, ‘You are turning the child out, and the old woman goes too.’”

“Then you won’t stay for the sake of the boys?”

“No, I won’t; they can manage for themselves, even Master Charley and even beautiful Master Alex. I will say, anyhow, she wasn’t a bit unkind. She was very nice; I will say that for her. She’s a very nice woman, and under other circumstances I’d be inclined to like her. But there! she’s the new queen, and my heart is with the old one.”

Poor Hannah burst into tears; I had never seen her so overcome before.

“You will come back belonging to the house as it will be in the future. You are too young not to grow up in the new house; but I’m too old, child. I’ll never forget the old ways.”

“Hannah, fudge!” said a voice behind; and turning round, I was amazed, and I must say rather disgusted, to see my brother Charley.

“Look here,” he said, “this is all stuff and nonsense. We are as jolly as we can be, and our step-mother is as good as gold, and why should we make mischief? As to the old times—now I’ll tell you what it is, Hannah, they were detestable.”

Charley made his bow, winking at me and vanishing.

“Just like him,” said Hannah.

“There’s a good deal of truth in what he says, Hannah.”

“Well, I like the old ways best,” said Hannah.

Poor old thing, I could not but pet her and comfort her. She gave me her address. She was going to live with a cousin, and if ever I wanted a home, and was disposed to quarrel with my step-mother, she would take me in—that she would. As I had no intention of quarrelling with my step-mother—for it is quite impossible for any one to have a completely one-sided quarrel—I told Hannah that all I could hope to do in the future was to visit her a good deal. In the end I told her that I would write her long letters from Paris, which quieted her a good bit. She kissed me, and when she went away I did feel, somehow, that the old life was really gone.

The old life! It quite went the next morning when I found myself on board the steamer which was to convey me from Dover to Calais. I stood with Hermione on one side and Augusta on the other, looking at the fast-receding waves as the gallant boat plied its way through them. Our chaperon, a dull, quiet-looking woman, who only spoke broken English, took little or no notice of us. Augusta’s eyes were fixed on the distant horizon. Occasionally I heard her murmuring lines of verse to herself. Once she glanced at me, and I saw that her eyes were full of tears.

“What is it?” I said.

She immediately repeated with great emphasis:

“And where are they? And where art thou,My country?”

“And where are they? And where art thou,My country?”

“Oh,” I cried, “don’t say any more! We are not in the humour for poetry.”

“Of course we’re not,” said Hermione, glancing at her.

“I was quoting,” said Augusta. “I was thinking, not about what Lord Byron thought when he spoke of ancient Greece, but of all that I was leaving behind in London.”

“And what are you leaving behind that is so specially valuable, Augusta?” I asked.

“Your father’s lectures,” she replied. She turned once more and looked at the horizon.

“Don’t worry her,” said Hermione in a low tone to me.

“I wonder if she’ll ever get over it,” I said.

Hermione and I began to pace slowly up and down the deck.

“I cannot imagine why my step-mother was so anxious that she should come with us,” I said.

“Because she felt that it was absolutely essential that Augusta should see another side of life. Dear, dear, I do feel excited! I wonder how we shall like the life. Don’t frown, Dumps; you surely needn’t worry about Augusta. She has made a kind of king of your father. She believes him to be all that is heroic and noble and majestic in life. It is really a most innocent admiration; let her keep it.”

“Yes, of course, if she likes,” I said.

The air was cold. I wrapped the warm fur cloak which my step-mother had insisted upon giving me for the voyage tightly round me, and sat down on one of the deck-seats. By-and-by Augusta tottered forward.

“It is strange how difficult it is to use your sea-legs,” she said.

She sprawled on to the seat by my side. Suddenly the vessel gave a lurch, and she found herself lying on the deck. A sailor rushed forward, picked her up, and advised the young lady to sit down; the wind was a little fresher and the vessel would sway a trifle. He brought a tarpaulin and wrapped it round us three. Augusta was on one side of me. Presently she pressed my hand.

“You are thenextbest,” she said, gazing at me with pathetic eyes.

“Next what?” I said.

“You are his daughter.”

“I will try and be friendly with you, Augusta; but I do bar one thing,” was my immediate comment.

“And what is that?”

“Nonsense. You must try and talk sense.”

She smiled very gently, and taking my hand within her own, stroked it.

“He also,” she said after a pause, “is very determined. In fact, I cannot with truth say that he has ever in his life given me what I could call a civil word. Now, you are like him; you are exceedingly blunt. The blunter you are, the more you resemble him.”

“Oh, good gracious! then I suppose I shall have to be civil.”

“I beseech of you, don’t; keep as like him as you can.”

“If you mean for a single moment that Dumps is like her father in appearance, you are much mistaken,” said Hermione, bending across me to speak to Augusta.

“She is like him neither in body nor in mind.”

“But she has a trifle of his moral force,” replied Augusta, with great majesty; and then, finding that neither Hermione nor I was at all in sympathy with her, she satisfied herself with remaining silent and leaning against my shoulder. Perhaps she thought I was imparting to her some of my moral force. I really felt a savage desire to push her away.

At last we landed, and found ourselves in a first-class compartment in the Paris train, and a few minutes afterwards we were on our journey. We arrived there in the evening. Then we found ourselves in an omnibus which was sent to meet us from the school, and were on our way to that home of all the virtues just beyond the Champs Élysées. My heart was beating high. I was full of suppressed anxiety. Hermione once or twice touched my hand. She was also very excited; she was wondering what sort of life lay before her. Augusta, on the other hand, was utterly irresponsive. She did not make one remark with regard to gay, beautiful, brilliant Paris, which looked, as it always does at this hour, full of marvellous witchery, so brilliantly lighted up were the broad streets, so altogether exhilarating was the tone of the bracing air.

Augusta sat huddled up in one corner of the omnibus, while Hermione and I got as close to the door as we could, and gazed out of the window, which was wide-open, exclaiming at each turn as we drove along. The Champs Élysées flashed into view; we drove on, and presently turned into a very broad street, and pulled up with a jerk before a house which seemed to have a balcony to each window, and which was brilliantly lit from attic to cellar.

Our companion, the lady who had brought us, now said something in excellent French, and we got out of the omnibus and followed her up a paved path and through an open doorway into a wide hall. Here a servant appeared, who was told to take us to our rooms. We followed her up some stairs, which were white marble and were uncarpeted. We passed a wide landing where there were some marble figures in the corners, and large palm-trees standing beside them; then again past folding-doors, and through a landing with more marble figures and more palms, until at last we entered through two doors, which were flung open wide, into a pretty little sitting-room. Why do I say little? The room was lofty, and was so simply furnished that it looked much larger than it was. The floor was covered with oak parquetry, and was polished to the most slippery degree. There were a couple of rugs here and there, but no carpet. In the centre of the room was a table covered with a white cloth, and containing knives, forks, glasses, and a bunch of flowers rather carelessly arranged in a vase in the middle. There were heavy chairs in the Louis-Quinze style, with a great deal of gilt about them, and a huge mirror, also with gilt, let into the wall at one side; and exactly opposite the wall was a door, which led into three small bedrooms, all communicating each with the other.

“These are your apartments, young ladies,” said the governess who had taken us upstairs. “This is your sitting-room, where to-night you will have your supper. You will not see your companions—or I think not—until the morning. You will be glad to retire to rest, doubtless, as you must have had a long journey. Your supper will come up in a moment or two. If you give your trunks to Justine she will unpack them and put your things away. Ah! here is the bell; if you will ring it when you want anything, Justine, who is the maid whose special duty it is to wait on you, will attend the summons.”

The governess turned to go away.

“But, please,” called out Hermione as she was closing the door, “what are we to call you?”

“Mademoiselle Wrex.”

We thanked her, and she vanished. Augusta stood in the middle of the room and clasped her hands.

“Well, now, I call this jolly!” I said.

“Delightful! And how quaint!” said Hermione. “I never thought we should have a sitting-room.”

“But there isn’t a book,” remarked Augusta.

“Oh, we don’t want books to-night, Augusta. Now, do lean on my moral strength and forget everything unpleasant,” I said.

“Oh! do look out of the window; here’s a balcony,” cried Hermione. “Let us go out on it when we have had supper.”

She pushed back the curtains, opened the window, and the next minute she was standing on the little balcony looking down into the crowded street.

“Oh! and that house opposite; we can see right into its rooms. What fun! What fun! I do call this life!” cried the girl.

“We had better go and unlock our trunks; remember we are at school,” I said.

“How unlike you, Dumps, to think of anything sensible!” was Hermione’s remark.

We went into our rooms.

“I am going to ring the bell for Justine,” said Hermione.

She did so, and a very pretty girl dressed in French style appeared. She could not speak English, but our home-made French was sufficient for the occasion. We managed to convey to her what we wanted, and she supplied us with hot water, took our keys, and immediately began to unpack our trunks and to put away our belongings.

“You shall have the room next to the sitting-room,” I said to Hermione.

“Very well,” she answered.

“I will take the next,” I said; “and, Augusta, will you have that one?”

“It’s all the same to me,” said Augusta.

In less than half-an-hour we felt ourselves more or less established in our new quarters.

“Now,” said Justine, becoming much animated, “you will want, youpauvre petites, some of the so nécessaire refreshment.”

She rang the bell with energy, and a man appeared bearing chocolate, cakes of different descriptions, and sandwiches. We sat down and made a merry meal. Even Augusta was pleased. She forgot the absence of books; she even forgot how far she was from the Professor. As to her poor mother, I do not think she even gave her a serious thought Hermione and I laughed and chatted. Finally we went and stood on the balcony, and Augusta retired to her own room.

“Now this is a new era; what will it do for us both?” said Hermione.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Aren’t you happy, Dumps?”

“Yes, I am a little; but I don’t suppose I am expected to take things very seriously.”

“It is a great change for me,” said Hermione, “from the regularity of the life at home.”

“I suppose it is,” I said; but then I added, “You cannot expect me to feel about it in that way.”

“Why so?”

“It seems to me,” I continued, “that I have been for the last few months taken off my feet and whirled into all sorts of new conditions. We were so poor, so straitened; we seemed to have none of what you would call the good things of life. Then all of a sudden Fortune’s wheel turned and we were—I suppose—rich. But still—”

“Don’t say you prefer the old life.”

“No—not really. I know she is so good; but you must admit that it is a great change for me.”

“I know it is; but you ought to be thankful.”

“That is it; I don’t think I am. And what is more,” I continued, “I don’t think this is the right school for Augusta. There is just a possibility that I may be shaped and moulded and twisted into a sort of fine lady; but nothing will ever make Augusta commonplace, nor will anything make you commonplace. Oh dear! there is some one knocking at the door.”

The knock was repeated. We said, “Come in!” and a girl with a very curly head of dark hair, bright eyes to match, and a radiant face, first peeped at us, then entered, shut the door with a noisy vehemence, and came towards as with both her hands extended.

Half-way across the room she deliberately shut her eyes.

“Now, I wonder which of you I shall feel first. One is Dumps and the other Hermione. I am expected to adore Dumps because she is so jolly and plain and sensible and—and awkward; and I am expected to worship Hermione because she is exactly the reverse. Now—ah! I know—this is Hermione!”

She clasped her arms round my somewhat stout waist.

“Wrong—wrong!” I cried.

She opened her eyes and uttered a merry laugh.

“I have been introduced to you,” she said, “by special letter from my friend Lilian St. Leger. And youareDumps?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Good! You do look jolly. I am Rosalind Mayhew. I am a great friend of Lilian’s. Of course, I am younger than she is—I am a year younger—and I am going to be at school for another year, so I’ll see you through, Dumps; Lilian has asked me to.”

“Sit down and tell us about every thing,” I said. “You know we are such strangers.”

“Washed up on this inhospitable shore, we scarcely know what we are to do with ourselves, or what savages we are to meet,” said Hermione very merrily.

“Then I’ll just tell you everything I can. You know, Mademoiselle Wrex would be wild if she knew that I had come up to see you this evening. She said I was not to do so, but to leave you in peace. Well, I could not help myself. I slipped out to come here, and I told Elfreda and Riki and Fhemie and Hortense that I could not resist it any longer.”

“What queer names!” I said.

“Oh, Riki—she’s a German comtesse; and Elfreda is a baroness; but we always call them just Riki and Elfreda. They are very jolly girls. Then as to Fhemie, she is more English than I am; and Hortense is French of the French. There are all sorts of girls at our school. The Dutch girls are some of the nicest. I will introduce you to them. Then there are Swedes, and several Americans. The Americans are very racy.”

“How many girls are there altogether at the school?” I asked.

“Well, between twenty and thirty. You see, the Baroness Gablestein is exceedingly particular.”

“Who is she?”

“My dear Dumps! You don’t mean to say that you have come to this school without knowing the name of our head-mistress?”

“A baroness? Gablestein?” I exclaimed.

“Yes; she really represents a sort of all-round nationality. To begin with, she is an Englishwoman herself by birth—that is, on one side. Her mother was English, but her father was French. Then she married a German baron, whose mother was a Dutchwoman, and whose grandmother was Italian. Her husband died, and she found, poor baroness! that she had not quite enough to live on, and so, as she was exceedingly well educated and had many aristocratic connections, she thought she would start a school. Her name in full is Baroness von Gablestein. She is most charming. She talks excellent English, but she also talks French and German and Italian like a native. She has a fair idea of the Dutch tongue, and is exceedingly kind to her Dutch connections; but I think her most valued pupils hail from the island home. But there! I don’t think I ought to stay any longer to-night. I don’t want Comtesse Riki to become curious and to poke her aristocratic little nose in here. She is a very jolly girl, and as nice as ever she can be; still, she is not English, you know. Oh, you’ll find all sides of character here. I can’t tell you how funny it is, particularly with regard to the French and German girls; they are so interested about theirdotand their future husbands and all the rest. I tell you itislife in this place! We do have good times; it isn’t a bit like a regular school. You see all sorts and conditions—good, bad, and indifferent; but I suppose the good preponderate. Now kiss me, Dumps. You will be quite a fresh variety. I believe you are blunt and honest—but, oh, don’t break the Salviati glass!”

“How very wrong of Lilian to have told you that story!” I said.

“My dear good creature, do you think that Lilian St. Leger could keep anything to herself? She is about the maddest young woman I ever came across; but we do miss her at school. Her name will be ‘Open sesame’ to you to every heart in the place. She is just the nicest and most bewitching of creatures. I only wish she was back.”

“She is coming out in about a month,” I said.

“Poor thing, how she always did hate the idea!”

“She won’t when the time comes,” said Hermione.

“Once she is plunged into that fun she will enjoy it as well as another.”

“I never should,” I said.

Rosalind glanced at me and laughed.

“Oh, perhaps you’ll change too,” she said. “Well, you look awfully nice. Your breakfast will be brought to your rooms to-morrow morning sharp at seven o’clock. We havedéjeunerat twelve, afternoon tea at four, dinner at seven. The rest of the day is divided up into all sorts of strange and odd patterns, totally different from English life. But, of course, the meals are all-important.”

“Why,” I said, “I did not think you were so greedy.”

“Nor are we; but you see, dear, during meals we each speak the language of our native country, and I can tell you there is a babel sometimes when the Baroness is not at the head of her table. All the rest of the time the English girlsmusttalk French, German, or Italian; and the French ones must talk English, German, or Italian; and the German girls must talk French, English, or Italian; and so on, and so on.”

“Oh, you confuse me,” I said. “How can any one girl talk three languages at once?”

“Day about, or week about—I forget which,” said Rosalind. “Now, good-night, good-night.”

She vanished.

“I declare I am dead-tired,” I said, and I sank down on the sofa.

“What a good thing Augusta wasn’t here!” said Hermione.

“Yes; she wouldn’t have understood a bit,” I said.

I went to Augusta’s room that night before I lay down to rest. She was sound asleep in the dress she had travelled in. She had not even taken the trouble to put a wrap over her. She looked tired, and was murmuring Latin verses in her sleep.

“It is not the right place for her; she will never, never get on with these baronesses and comtesses, and all this medley of foreign life,” I could not help saying to myself.

I covered her up, but did not attempt to awake her; and then I went to my own room, got into bed, and went to sleep with a whirl of emotion and wonder filling my brain.

Part 2, Chapter IX.First Impressions.It seemed to me that I had hardly closed my eyes in sleep before I was awakened again by seeing Justine standing by my bedside with a tray of very appetising food in her hand.“Here are your rolls and coffee, mademoiselle,” she said.As she spoke she laid the little tray on a small table by the side of my bed, evidently put there for the purpose; and taking a dressing-jacket from the wardrobe, she made me put it on, and admonished me to eat my breakfast quickly, as I must rise and attend prayers in the space of three-quarters of an hour.Here was hurry indeed. I munched my delicious rolls, and sipped my coffee, and thought of the new life which was before me, and then I got up with energy and washed and dressed. When I had completed my toilet I went into the sitting-room, for although our rooms opened one into the other, there were other doors on to an adjoining landing. Here I found Hermione waiting for me.“Where’s Augusta?” I said.“I don’t know—surely she is dressed.”“I’ll go to her room and find out,” I said.I went and knocked at the door. A heavy voice said “Come in,” and I entered. Augusta was now lying well wrapped up in the bedclothes. She had not touched either her coffee or her rolls.“Aren’t you getting up?” I said. “The bell will ring in a moment for prayers. We are expected to go down.”“I have a headache,” said Augusta.“Are you really ill, Augusta? I am sorry.”“I am not ill, but I have a headache. I had bad dreams last night.”“And you never got into bed at all.”“I fell asleep, and my dreams were troublesome. I can’t get up yet. No, I won’t have any breakfast. I wish I hadn’t come; I don’t like this place.”I knelt down by the bed and took her hand.“You know that your mother and your uncle wouldn’t have made such an effort to send you here if they didn’t think it would be for your good,” I said. “Do try and like it.”There was a new tone in my voice. I really felt sorry for her. She raised her head and fixed her dark eyes on my face.“Do you think your father would like it?”“I am sure he would, Augusta,” I said; and an idea flashed through my brain. I would write that very day to my step-mother and beg her to get my father to send Augusta a message. The slightest word from him would control her life; she would work hard at her French, her German, hard at manners, refinement—at everything—if only he would give her the clue. Surely my step-mother would manage it.I flashed a bright glance at her now.“I know that my father would like it. I’ll tell the Baroness you are not well and cannot come down this morning.”“The Baroness? What did you say?” said Augusta.“Our head-mistress; her name is Baroness von Gablestein.”Augusta closed her eyes and shivered.“To this we have sunk,” I heard her mutter, and then she turned her face to the wall.A great bell, musical and dear, sounded all over the house.“That is our summons,” I said. “Mademoiselle Wrex will meet us on the next landing, and I will come to you as soon as I can.”I left the room.“What’s the matter?” said Hermione.“She says she has a headache, but I think she is mostly sulking,” I replied. “I am going to write to my step-mother; I think I know how to manage her.”“Dumps, how bright you look—and how happy!” Yes, I was happy; I was feeling in my heart of hearts that I really meant to do my very best.On the next landing we met Mademoiselle Wrex. See looked approvingly at us. I told her about Augusta, and she said she would see to the young lady, but in the meantime we must follow her downstairs. We went down and down. How airy and fresh, and I must say how cold also, the house felt! I had always imagined that French houses were warm. When we arrived on the groundétagewe turned to our left and entered a very large room. Like all the other rooms in the house, it was bare of carpet. On a sort of dais at the top of the room there stood the Baroness von Gablestein. She was one of the handsomest and most distinguished-looking women I had ever seen. She was not young; she must have been between forty and fifty years of age. Her hair was dark by nature, but was now very much mixed with grey. She had dark and very thick eyebrows, and a broad and massive forehead. She wore her hair on a high cushion rolled back from her face. The rest of her features were regular and very clearly cut. Her lips were sweet but firm, and her eyes dark and very penetrating. But it was not her mere features, it was the clear, energetic, and yet joyous expression of her face which so captivated me that I, Dumps, stood perfectly still when I saw her, and did not move for the space of two or three seconds. I felt some one poke me in the back, and a voice in broken English said, “But stare not so. Go right forward.”I turned, and saw a girl much shorter than myself, and much more podgy, who glanced at me, smiled, and pointed to a bench where I was to sit.The Baroness read a few verses of Scripture in the French tongue, and then we all knelt down and a collect for the day was read, also in French, and then we were desired to join our different classes in the schoolroom. I stood still, and so did Hermione. The Baroness seemed to observe us for the first time, and raised her brows.Mademoiselle Wrex came up and said something to her.“Ah, yes,” I heard her say in very sweet, clear English. “The dear children! But certainly I will speak with them.”She went down two or three steps and came to meet us.“You are Rachel Grant,” she said. “Welcome to our school.—And you are Hermione Aldyce. Welcome to our school.”She had a sort of regal manner; she bent and kissed me on the centre of my forehead, and she did the same to Hermione.“I trust you will enjoy your life here. I trust you will in all respects be worthy of the reputation of our school; and I trust, also, that we shall do our utmost to make you happy and wise.”She paused for a minute.“My dear children,” she said then, “this is a very busy hour for me, and I will see you later; in the meantime I leave you in the care of Mademoiselle Wrex, who will take you to those teachers who will superintend your studies.”I felt my cheeks growing very red. Hermione was cool and composed. We followed Mademoiselle Wrex through several rooms into the schoolroom, and there we were examined by a German lady, who put us in a very low form as regarded that language. We were next questioned by a French mademoiselle, who did likewise; but an English lady, with a matter-of-fact and very quiet face, rescued us from the ignominious position in which we found ourselves with regard to German and French by discovering that our attainments in our mother-tongue were by no means contemptible.In the end we found, so to speak, our level, and our school life began right merrily.Late that evening I found time to write a few words to my step-mother.“I will tell you all about the school later on,” I began. “At present I feel topsy-turvy and whirly-whirly; I don’t know where I am, nor what has happened to me. I dare say I shall like it very much, but I will keep my long letter for Sunday; we have all the time we want for ourselves on Sunday; no one interferes, and we are allowed to talk in our own tongue—that is, if we wish to do so. What I am specially writing to you about now is Augusta. She is taking the change in her circumstances very badly, I must say, my dear step-mother; she is not reconciled. She would not get up this morning, nor would she undress last night. She pleads a headache, and will not eat. But, at the same time, Mademoiselle Wrex, who has the charge of our department, cannot find anything special the matter with her. I think it is a case of homesickness, but not the ordinary sort, for she is certainly not pining for her mother. It really is a case of grieving because she cannot attend my father’s lectures. She does think a great deal of him, and seems to have set her whole life by his example. Now, if you could get him to send her the tiniest little note, just the merest line, to say he hopes she will do well and like her French and German—oh, anything will do—she will do her duty and will be as happy as the day is long. You are so clever, I know you can manage it. I haven’t time for another word.—Your affectionate step-daughter, Rachel Grant.”

It seemed to me that I had hardly closed my eyes in sleep before I was awakened again by seeing Justine standing by my bedside with a tray of very appetising food in her hand.

“Here are your rolls and coffee, mademoiselle,” she said.

As she spoke she laid the little tray on a small table by the side of my bed, evidently put there for the purpose; and taking a dressing-jacket from the wardrobe, she made me put it on, and admonished me to eat my breakfast quickly, as I must rise and attend prayers in the space of three-quarters of an hour.

Here was hurry indeed. I munched my delicious rolls, and sipped my coffee, and thought of the new life which was before me, and then I got up with energy and washed and dressed. When I had completed my toilet I went into the sitting-room, for although our rooms opened one into the other, there were other doors on to an adjoining landing. Here I found Hermione waiting for me.

“Where’s Augusta?” I said.

“I don’t know—surely she is dressed.”

“I’ll go to her room and find out,” I said.

I went and knocked at the door. A heavy voice said “Come in,” and I entered. Augusta was now lying well wrapped up in the bedclothes. She had not touched either her coffee or her rolls.

“Aren’t you getting up?” I said. “The bell will ring in a moment for prayers. We are expected to go down.”

“I have a headache,” said Augusta.

“Are you really ill, Augusta? I am sorry.”

“I am not ill, but I have a headache. I had bad dreams last night.”

“And you never got into bed at all.”

“I fell asleep, and my dreams were troublesome. I can’t get up yet. No, I won’t have any breakfast. I wish I hadn’t come; I don’t like this place.”

I knelt down by the bed and took her hand.

“You know that your mother and your uncle wouldn’t have made such an effort to send you here if they didn’t think it would be for your good,” I said. “Do try and like it.”

There was a new tone in my voice. I really felt sorry for her. She raised her head and fixed her dark eyes on my face.

“Do you think your father would like it?”

“I am sure he would, Augusta,” I said; and an idea flashed through my brain. I would write that very day to my step-mother and beg her to get my father to send Augusta a message. The slightest word from him would control her life; she would work hard at her French, her German, hard at manners, refinement—at everything—if only he would give her the clue. Surely my step-mother would manage it.

I flashed a bright glance at her now.

“I know that my father would like it. I’ll tell the Baroness you are not well and cannot come down this morning.”

“The Baroness? What did you say?” said Augusta.

“Our head-mistress; her name is Baroness von Gablestein.”

Augusta closed her eyes and shivered.

“To this we have sunk,” I heard her mutter, and then she turned her face to the wall.

A great bell, musical and dear, sounded all over the house.

“That is our summons,” I said. “Mademoiselle Wrex will meet us on the next landing, and I will come to you as soon as I can.”

I left the room.

“What’s the matter?” said Hermione.

“She says she has a headache, but I think she is mostly sulking,” I replied. “I am going to write to my step-mother; I think I know how to manage her.”

“Dumps, how bright you look—and how happy!” Yes, I was happy; I was feeling in my heart of hearts that I really meant to do my very best.

On the next landing we met Mademoiselle Wrex. See looked approvingly at us. I told her about Augusta, and she said she would see to the young lady, but in the meantime we must follow her downstairs. We went down and down. How airy and fresh, and I must say how cold also, the house felt! I had always imagined that French houses were warm. When we arrived on the groundétagewe turned to our left and entered a very large room. Like all the other rooms in the house, it was bare of carpet. On a sort of dais at the top of the room there stood the Baroness von Gablestein. She was one of the handsomest and most distinguished-looking women I had ever seen. She was not young; she must have been between forty and fifty years of age. Her hair was dark by nature, but was now very much mixed with grey. She had dark and very thick eyebrows, and a broad and massive forehead. She wore her hair on a high cushion rolled back from her face. The rest of her features were regular and very clearly cut. Her lips were sweet but firm, and her eyes dark and very penetrating. But it was not her mere features, it was the clear, energetic, and yet joyous expression of her face which so captivated me that I, Dumps, stood perfectly still when I saw her, and did not move for the space of two or three seconds. I felt some one poke me in the back, and a voice in broken English said, “But stare not so. Go right forward.”

I turned, and saw a girl much shorter than myself, and much more podgy, who glanced at me, smiled, and pointed to a bench where I was to sit.

The Baroness read a few verses of Scripture in the French tongue, and then we all knelt down and a collect for the day was read, also in French, and then we were desired to join our different classes in the schoolroom. I stood still, and so did Hermione. The Baroness seemed to observe us for the first time, and raised her brows.

Mademoiselle Wrex came up and said something to her.

“Ah, yes,” I heard her say in very sweet, clear English. “The dear children! But certainly I will speak with them.”

She went down two or three steps and came to meet us.

“You are Rachel Grant,” she said. “Welcome to our school.—And you are Hermione Aldyce. Welcome to our school.”

She had a sort of regal manner; she bent and kissed me on the centre of my forehead, and she did the same to Hermione.

“I trust you will enjoy your life here. I trust you will in all respects be worthy of the reputation of our school; and I trust, also, that we shall do our utmost to make you happy and wise.”

She paused for a minute.

“My dear children,” she said then, “this is a very busy hour for me, and I will see you later; in the meantime I leave you in the care of Mademoiselle Wrex, who will take you to those teachers who will superintend your studies.”

I felt my cheeks growing very red. Hermione was cool and composed. We followed Mademoiselle Wrex through several rooms into the schoolroom, and there we were examined by a German lady, who put us in a very low form as regarded that language. We were next questioned by a French mademoiselle, who did likewise; but an English lady, with a matter-of-fact and very quiet face, rescued us from the ignominious position in which we found ourselves with regard to German and French by discovering that our attainments in our mother-tongue were by no means contemptible.

In the end we found, so to speak, our level, and our school life began right merrily.

Late that evening I found time to write a few words to my step-mother.

“I will tell you all about the school later on,” I began. “At present I feel topsy-turvy and whirly-whirly; I don’t know where I am, nor what has happened to me. I dare say I shall like it very much, but I will keep my long letter for Sunday; we have all the time we want for ourselves on Sunday; no one interferes, and we are allowed to talk in our own tongue—that is, if we wish to do so. What I am specially writing to you about now is Augusta. She is taking the change in her circumstances very badly, I must say, my dear step-mother; she is not reconciled. She would not get up this morning, nor would she undress last night. She pleads a headache, and will not eat. But, at the same time, Mademoiselle Wrex, who has the charge of our department, cannot find anything special the matter with her. I think it is a case of homesickness, but not the ordinary sort, for she is certainly not pining for her mother. It really is a case of grieving because she cannot attend my father’s lectures. She does think a great deal of him, and seems to have set her whole life by his example. Now, if you could get him to send her the tiniest little note, just the merest line, to say he hopes she will do well and like her French and German—oh, anything will do—she will do her duty and will be as happy as the day is long. You are so clever, I know you can manage it. I haven’t time for another word.—Your affectionate step-daughter, Rachel Grant.”

“I will tell you all about the school later on,” I began. “At present I feel topsy-turvy and whirly-whirly; I don’t know where I am, nor what has happened to me. I dare say I shall like it very much, but I will keep my long letter for Sunday; we have all the time we want for ourselves on Sunday; no one interferes, and we are allowed to talk in our own tongue—that is, if we wish to do so. What I am specially writing to you about now is Augusta. She is taking the change in her circumstances very badly, I must say, my dear step-mother; she is not reconciled. She would not get up this morning, nor would she undress last night. She pleads a headache, and will not eat. But, at the same time, Mademoiselle Wrex, who has the charge of our department, cannot find anything special the matter with her. I think it is a case of homesickness, but not the ordinary sort, for she is certainly not pining for her mother. It really is a case of grieving because she cannot attend my father’s lectures. She does think a great deal of him, and seems to have set her whole life by his example. Now, if you could get him to send her the tiniest little note, just the merest line, to say he hopes she will do well and like her French and German—oh, anything will do—she will do her duty and will be as happy as the day is long. You are so clever, I know you can manage it. I haven’t time for another word.—Your affectionate step-daughter, Rachel Grant.”

Part 2, Chapter X.The Professor’s Letter.I cannot give all the particulars with regard to my life at the school, which was called Villa Bella Vista, although I cannot tell why; perhaps because from the upper windows you could catch a glimpse of the Champs Élysées. Be that as it may, it was in some ways a Bella Vista for me, a very great change from my old life in the dark house near the ancient college, from poverty to luxury, from dullness to sunshine, from the commonplace school to one which was the best that it was possible for a school to be. The Baroness von Gablestein was a woman of great integrity of mind and great uprightness of bearing, and her strong personality she managed more or less to impress on all the girls. Of course, there were black sheep in this fold, as there must be black sheep in every fold; but Hermione and I soon found our niche, and made friends with some of the nicest girls. We liked our lessons; we took kindly to French and German; Italian would follow presently. French and German were now the order of the day. In short, we were contented.We had not been a fortnight at the school Bella Vista before we began to feel that we had always lived there. Were we not part and parcel of the house? Were not its interests ours, the girls who lived there our friends, and the life we lived the only one worth living? We did not acknowledge to ourselves that we felt like this, but nevertheless we did.As to Augusta—well, for the first few days she was as grumpy and unsociable as girl could be. Then there came a change over her, and I knew quite well what had caused it. The post was delivered in the evening, and there was a letter addressed to Augusta. She took it up languidly. She seemed to feel no interest whatever in anything. I watched her without daring to appear to do so. We were in our own little sitting-room at that time, and Rosalind Mayhew was having supper with us. This treat was always allowed on Saturday evenings. The girls could ask one another to have supper, only giving directions downstairs with regard to the transference of the food to the different rooms. Rosalind was our guest on this occasion.Augusta laid her letter by her plate; she put one hand on the table, and presently took up the letter and glanced at it again. I did not dare to say, “Won’t you read it?” for had I done so that would have provoked her into putting it into her pocket, and not glancing at it perhaps until the following morning, or goodness knows when. So, glancing at Hermione, I proposed that those who had finished supper should go and stand on the balcony for a little. We all went except Augusta, who remained behind. I kept one ear listening while I chatted with my companions. It seemed to me that I certainlydidhear the rustle of paper—the sort of rustle that somewhat stiff paper would make when it is taken out of its envelope. Then there was utter stillness, and afterwards a wild rush and a door slammed. I looked into the sitting-room. It was empty.“She has read it, has she not?” said Hermione.“Oh, hush, hush!” I whispered. “Don’t say a word.”“Are you talking about that queer, half-mad girl?” said Rosalind.“Oh, I’m sure she will be all right in the future,” I said.Rosalind changed the conversation to something else.“By the way, Dumps, Comtesse Riki has taken a most violent fancy to you.”“What! to me?” I asked.“Yes; and the Baroness Elfreda to Hermione.”Now, Comtesse Riki was a very delicately made, exquisitely pretty girl, of the fairest German type. Elfreda, on the contrary, was short and exceedingly fat, with a perfectly square face, high cheek-bones, and a quantity of hay-coloured hair which she wore in two very tight plaits strained back from her face.Hermione shrugged her shoulders.“They’re both awfully nice; don’t you think so?” said Rosalind.“I have scarcely given them a thought,” I answered.My mind was still dwelling on the letter which Augusta had received. Presently Rosalind left us, and Hermione and I wondered what the result would be.“Go to her door and knock, and see if she will come out and tell us; won’t you, Dumps?” said Hermione.I did go and knock.“Yes, dear?” said Augusta’s voice. It was quite bright and absolutely changed.“Aren’t you coming out to stand on the balcony a little, and to chat? Do come, please.”“Not to-night, dear; I am very busy.”Still that new, wonderful, exceedingly cheerful voice.“The spell has worked,” I said to Hermione when I returned to her.We neither of us saw Augusta again until the next morning, and then there was a marvellous change in her. She did not tell us what had caused it. To begin with, she was neatly dressed; to follow, she ate an excellent breakfast; and again, wonder of wonders! she applied herself with extreme and passionate diligence to her French and German lessons. She looked up when her mistress spoke; she no longer indulged in silence broken only by rhapsodies of passionate snatches of verse from her favourite authors. She was altogether a changed Augusta. I did not say a word to her on the subject, and I cautioned Hermione not to breathe what I had done.“If she thinks father has written to her on his own account the spell will work, and she will be saved,” I said.It was not until a fortnight later that Augusta said to me in a very gentle tone, “I see daylight. How very naughty I was when I first came! How badly I did behave! But now a guiding hand has been stretched out, and I know what I am expected to do.”I jumped up and kissed her.“I am glad,” I said.“You cannot be as glad as I am,” she answered; and she took both my hands in one of hers and looked into my face, while tears rose to her bright, rather sunken eyes. “To think thatheshould take the trouble to write!”I ran away. I did not want to be unkind, and truly did not mean to; but Augusta’s manner, notwithstanding the reform in her character, was almost past bearing.“Poor, dear old father!” I said afterwards to Hermione, “he can little realise what a fearful responsibility he has in life—the whole of Augusta’s future—and just because he is a clever lecturer. I really cannot understand it.”“Nor I,” said Hermione. “I myself think his speeches are rather dull; but I suppose I have a different order of mind.”I remember quite well that on that occasion we girls were permitted to go for a delightful walk into the Bois de Boulogne. We went, of course, with some of the governesses; but when we got there we were allowed a certain amount of freedom—for instance, we could choose our own companions and walk with whom we pleased. We were just leaving the house on this occasion when Comtesse Riki came up to me and asked if I would walk with her. I acceded at once, although I had hoped for a long walk with Hermione, as I had received a budget of home news on that day, and I wanted to talk it over with her; last, but not least, there had come a voluminous letter from Lilian St. Leger. It was a little provoking, but Riki’s very pretty blue eyes, her pathetic mouth, and sweet smile conquered. At the same instant Baroness Elfreda flew up to Hermione and tucked her podgy hand inside the girl’s arm.“I couldn’t walk with you, Dumps,” she said, “for a dumpy girl couldn’t walk with another dumpy girl—so I want to be your friend, a sweet, slight, graceful English girl.”Hermione consented with what patience she could, and we started off on our walk. While we were in the town we had, of course, to walk two by two; but presently, in a special and rather retired part of the gardens, the governesses were less particular, and each couple was allowed to keep a little away from the other.“Now, that’s a comfort,” said Riki. “I have so much I want to ask you.”“What about?” I said.“About your so delightful English ways. You have much of the freedom, have you not?”“I don’t know,” I replied.“Oh, but you must! Think now; no girl here, nor in my country, nor in any other, I think, on the Continent, would be allowed to go about unattended—not at least before her marriage.”“But,” I answered, “we don’t think about getting married at all in England—I mean girls of my age.”“If you don’t think it impertinent, would you tell me what your age may be?”I said I should be sixteen in May.“But surely you will think of your marriage within about a year or two, will you not?”I laughed.“What are you talking about?” I said. “Really, Comtesse, I cannot understand you.”“Fray don’t call me that; call me Riki. I like you so very much; you are different from others.”“Every one tells me that,” I answered, a little bitterness in my tone.“You have the goodness within—you perhaps have not the beauty without; but what does that matter when goodness within is more valuable? It is but to look at you to know that you have got that.”“If you were really to see into my heart, Riki, you would perceive that I am an exceedingly selfish and very ungrateful girl.”“Oh dear!” said the Comtesse Riki, “what is it to be what you call ungrateful?”“Not to be thankful for the blessings that are given you,” I made answer.She glanced at me in a puzzled way.“Some day, perhaps,” I said, “you will visit our England and see for yourself what the life is like.”“I should like it,” she replied—“that is, after my nuptials.”“But you are only a child yourself.”“Not a child—I am sixteen; I shall be seventeen in a year; then I shall leave school and go home, and—and—”“Begin your fun,” I said.“Oh no,” she answered—“not exactly. I may go to a few of the dances and take atour(dance) with the young men—I should, of course, have many partners; but what is that? Then I shall become affianced, and my betrothal will be a very great event; and afterwards there will be my trousseau, and the preparing for my home, and then my marriage with the husband whom my parents have chosen for me.”“And you look forward to that?” I said.“Of course; what else does any girl look forward to?”I could not speak at all for a minute; then I said, “I am truly thankful I am not a German.”She smiled.“If we,” she said slowly, “have one thing to be more—what you call grateful for—than another, it is that we don’t belong to your so strange country of England. Your coldness, and your long time of remaining without yourdotand your betrothal and your so nécessaire husband, is too terrible for any girl in the Fatherland even to contemplate the pain.”“Oh!” I said, feeling quite angry, “we pityyou. You see, Comtesse, you and I can never agree.”She smiled and shook her little head.“But what would you do,” she said a few minutes afterwards, “if these things were not arranged? You might reach, say, twenty, or even twenty-one or twenty-two, and—”“Well, suppose I did reach twenty-one or twenty-two; surely those years are not so awful?”“But to be unbetrothed at twenty-one or twenty-two,” she continued. “Why, do you not know that at twenty-five a girl—why, she is lost.”“Lost?” I cried.“Well, what we call put aside—of no account. She doesn’t go to dances. She stays at home with the old parents. The young sister supersedes her; she goes out all shining and beautiful, and the adored one comes her way, and she is betrothed, and gets presents and thedotand the beautiful wedding, and the home where the house linen is so marvellous and the furniture so good. Then for the rest of her days she is a good housewife, and looks after the comforts of the lord of the house.”“The lord of the house?” I gasped.“Her husband. Surely it is her one and only desire to think of his comforts. What is she but second to him? Oh! the chosen wife is happy, and fulfils her mission. But the unfortunate maiden who reaches the age of twenty-five, why, there is nothing for her—nothing!”The Comtesses pretty checks were flushed with vivid rose; her blue eyes darkened with horror.“Poor maiden of twenty-five!” I said. “Why, in England you are only supposed to be properly grown-up about then.”“But surely,” said the Comtesse, glancing at me and shrugging her shoulders—“you surely do not mean to say that at that advanced age marriages take place?”“Much more than before a girl is twenty-five. But really,” I added, “I don’t want to talk about marriages anddots; I am only a schoolgirl.”The Comtesse laughed.“Why will you so speak? What else has a girl of my great nation to think of and talk of? And the mademoiselles here—what have they to think of and to talk of? Oh! it is all the same; we live for it—ourdot, and our future husbands, and the home where he is lord and we his humble servant.”“It doesn’t sound at all interesting,” I said; and after that my conversation with Comtesse Riki languished a little.A few days afterwards this same girl came to me when I was preparing a letter for home. I was writing in our sitting-room when she entered. She glanced quickly round her.“It is you who have the sympathy,” she said.“I hope so,” I answered. “What is the matter, Riki?” Her eyes were full of tears; she hastily put up her handkerchief and wiped them away.“There is no doubt,” she said, “that you English are allowed liberties unheard-of for a German girl like me. I would beg of you to do me a great favour. I have been thinking of what you said the other day about this so great liberty of the English maidens, and the great extension of years which to them is permitted.”“Yes, yes?” I said, and as I spoke I glanced at the gilt clock on the chiffonier.“You are in so great a hurry, are you not?” asked Riki.“I want to finish my letter.”“And you will perhaps post it; is it not so?”“Yes; I am going out with Hermione and Mademoiselle Wrex.”“You are going, perhaps, to shops to buy things?”“Yes. Do you want me to bring you in some chocolates?”“Oh! that would be vare nice; but if you would, with your own letter, put this into the post also?”As she spoke she gave me a letter addressed in the somewhat thin and pointed hand which most German girls use, and which I so cordially detested.“It is to Heinrich,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask you; but your heart is warm, and—he suffers.”“But why should I post it? Will you not take it downstairs and put it with the other letters in the letter-box?”The delicate colour flew to her cheeks; her eyes were brighter than usual.“Heinrich would not then receive it,” she answered. “You will post it—it is nécessaire for him that he gets it soon; he is in need of comfort. You will, will you not?”I really hardly thought about the matter. I did not know why, but it did not occur to me that Riki was asking me to do anything underhand or outside the rules. She laid the letter on the table and flew away. I had just finished my own; I put it into an envelope and addressed it, and taking Riki’s letter also, I put on my outdoor things and went downstairs to meet Hermione and Mademoiselle Wrex.It was now a very bitter day in March. We had been at school for two months. The time had flown. I was a healthy and very happy girl.Mademoiselle Wrex said, “We must walk quickly to keep ourselves warm in this so bitter north-east wind.”We all walked quickly, with our hands in our muffs, and as we were passing a pillar-box I dropped the letters in.“Now that is off my mind,” I thought, with a sigh of relief.“How did you manage to write two letters?” asked Hermione. “You were in such a fearful fuss getting through your one!”I made no answer. Something the next moment distracted our attention, and we absolutely forgot the circumstance.It was not until about a week afterwards that I observed a change in Comtesse Riki. She was very pale, and coughed now and then. She no longer took interest in her work, and often sat for a long time pensive and melancholy, her eyes fixed on my face. One bitterly cold day I found her alone in thesalon, where we seldom sat; for although there was what was called central heating all over the house, it was not often put on to any great extent in thesalon. Riki had flung herself into a chair which was the reverse of comfortable. She started up when she saw me.“Oh, you will sympathise with me in my trouble!”“What is the matter?” I asked.“If we might go for a little walk together.”“But why so?” I asked. “You are not fit to go out to-day, it is so cold.”“But the cold will revive me. Feel my hand; my pulse beats so fast.”I took her hand; her little pulse was bounding in her slender wrist.“I am sure you ought not to go out; indeed, you can’t.” She looked up at me imploringly. Suddenly she burst out crying.“Oh Riki,” I said, “what is the matter?”“If you don’t help me I shall be the most miserable girl in all the world,” she said. “And it is all your fault, too.”“My fault?” I cried. “Why, Riki, you must be mad. Whatever have I done?”“Well, you have told me about your so wonderful English customs, and I have been taking them to my heart; and there is Heinrich—”“Who is Heinrich—your brother?”She stared at me, but made no reply.“He was the person you wrote to, was he not?”“Oh, hush, hush! Raise not your voice to that point; some one may come in and hear.”“And why should not people hear? I must say English girls have secrets, but not that sort,” I said, with great indignation.“You are so bitter and so proud,” she said; “but you know not the heart-hunger.”“Oh yes, I do!” I answered. I was thinking of my mother and her miniature, and the fading image of that loved memory in the old home. I also thought of the new step-mother. Yes, yes, I knew what heart-hunger was. My tone changed to one of pity.“I have felt it,” I said.“Oh, then, you have had your beloved one?”“Indeed, yes.”“Did I not say that of all the school it was natural I should select you to be to me a companion?”“Can I help you?” I said.“You can. Will you, as I am not allowed to go out, take this and put it into a letter-box?”“But I cannot make out why there should be any trouble.”“It is so easy, and Heinrich—the poor, the sad, the inconsolable—wants to get it at once.”Again I was a remarkably silly girl; but I took Riki’s letter and posted it for her. She devoured me with kisses, and immediately recovered her spirits.The next day she was better and able to go out, and when she returned home she presented me with a magnificent box of French bonbons. Now, I was exceedingly partial to those sweets. Riki often came into our little sitting-room, and all the girls began to remark on our friendship.“It is so unlike the Comtesse Riki to take up passionately with any one girl!” said Rosalind when this sort of thing had been going on for a few weeks and we were all talking of the Easter holidays.The great point of whether I was to go home or not had not yet been decided. Hermione knew she must remain at the school; Augusta would probably do likewise.Rosalind went on commenting on my friendship with Riki. After a pause she said, “Of course, she has been at the school for some time; she leaves in the summer.”“Oh!” I answered; “she told me that she would be here for another year.”“I think it has been changed. She is not contented; the Baroness will not keep a pupil in the school who shows discontent.”“But surely she is quite a nice girl?”Rosalind was silent for a minute; then she said, “Perhaps I ought just to warn you, Dumps. I wouldn’t trouble myself to do so—for I make a point of never interfering between one girl and another—but as you are Lilian St. Leger’s friend, and have been specially introduced to me through her, it is but fair to say that you ought to regard the German girl from a different standpoint from the English one.”“Certainly the German girl is different,” I said; and I laughingly repeated some of Riki’s conversation with me in the Bois de Boulogne.“Think of any girl talking ofdots, and being betrothed, and getting married at her age!” I said.“Oh, that isn’t a bit strange,” replied Rosalind; “they all do it. These German girls get married very young, and the marriages are arranged for them by their parents; they never have anything to say to them themselves.”“Well, it is horrible,” I said, “and I told her so.”“Did you?” said Rosalind very slowly. “Well, perhaps that accounts.” She looked very grave. After a minute she bent towards me and said in a low tone—too low even for Hermione to hear—“Whatever you do, don’t post letters for her.”I started and felt myself turning very white.“You won’t, will you?” said Rosalind, giving my arm a little squeeze.I made no reply.“It will be madness if you do. You cannot possibly tell what it means, Dumps.”“Why, is there anything very dreadful in it?”“Dreadful? Why, the Baroness has all the letters put into a box in the hall—I mean all the foreigners’ letters—and she herself keeps the key. She opens the box to take out the letters both for the post and when they have arrived, and distributes them amongst the girls.”“And she doesn’t do that for the English girls?”“No—not for a few. With the consent of their parents, they are allowed to have a free correspondence.” I sat very still and quiet. One or two things were being made plain to me. After a pause I said, “I can tell you nothing, Rosalind, but I thank you very much.”On the next day I myself was seized with the first severe cold I had had that winter; it was very bad and kept me in bed. I had been in bed all day, not feeling exactly ill, but glad of the warmth and comfort of my snug little room. Towards evening Augusta came in and asked me if I would like any friends to visit me.“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered. “Of course, Hermione or you; but the others—I think not.”“There’s that stupid girl, that pale-faced Comtesse—Riki, I think you call her—she is very anxious to come and have a chat with you.”Now, to tell the truth, I had been feeling uncomfortable enough ever since Rosalind had spoken to me about the rule with regard to the foreign girls’ letters. The Baroness von Gablestein had every right to make what rules she liked in her own school, but I could not help thinking that it was hardly wise that such a marked distinction should be made between girls of one nationality and another. I now understood that all foreign girls’ letters were pot into the post-box in the hall, and the Baroness looked them over before they were posted. But the affair was not mine, and I should have forgotten all about it but for the very uncomfortable feeling that I myself, unwittingly, had twice broken this most solemn rule of the house, and had twice posted a letter for Riki von Kronenfel.Now, it seemed to me that this might be a good opportunity for me to expostulate with her on the whole position, and to tell her that she had done very wrong to allow me innocently to break the rule of the house, and to assure her that under no circumstances should I be guilty of such an indiscretion again.Augusta meanwhile seated herself comfortably by my bedside.“Horrible,” she said—“horrible! but for the prospect of pleasing him—”I did not pretend to misunderstand her.“But you are really getting on splendidly, Augusta,” I said.“Ah, yes! I should be a brute indeed did I do otherwise. And perhaps when I am sufficiently acquainted with the German tongue I may find out some of its beauties—or, rather, the beauties of its literature, for the language itself is all guttural and horrible—worse than French.”“But surely French is very dainty?” I said.“Dainty!” said Augusta, with scorn. “What one wants is a language of thought—a language that will show sentiment, that will reveal the depth of nature; and how, I ask you, can you find it in that frippery the French tongue?”“I do not know,” I answered somewhat wearily.“I like Molière and the writings of some of the other great French poets very much indeed.”“Well,” said Augusta, “I have got to study a great quantity of German for to-morrow morning. I must go into my room and tackle it. The Professor said I was not to write to him, but I keep his treasured letter near my heart; but if you are writing home you might say that Augusta is not ungrateful. Do you ever have the great privilege of writing direct to your father?”“I could, of course, write to father any day,” I said; “but as a matter of fact I don’t.”“But why not?”“It would worry the poor man.”“But you might write just once to give him my message.”“I will, Augusta, if you will leave me now.”“But why do you want to get rid of me? How like you are to him! You have just that same bluntness and the same determination. You interest me at times profoundly.”“Well,” I said, “if I interest you to the extent of getting you to start your German it would be better.”“All right; but what am I to say to that silly Comtesse?”“Tell her that I will see her by-and-by.”“You had much better not. She is not worth a grain of salt. A little piece of conceit!”Augusta left the room. She had not been gone many minutes before there came a tap at the door, and the Comtesse, dressed in the palest blue and looking remarkably pretty, entered.“Ah!” she said, “you have caught cold from me, you poor English girl, and I am so disconsolate.”She sank down at the foot of the bed and fixed her bright eyes on my face.“You are much better,” I said.“Ah, yes, that is so. I am what is called more spirited, and it is because of you; but for you I should be indeed disconsolate. I might have chosen the stupid, the so weary life of the good German housewife, instead of—”“What do you mean?” I said.“I cannot say more. There are secrets which can be guessed but which must not be spoken.”“Riki,” I said, “I do wish you would give me a right good lesson in talking German.”“Oh, but I couldn’t—to give you a lesson. But why should I thus discompose myself?”“It would be a good and worthy object for one girl to help another.”“I want not to think of objects good and worthy. Why should I? That isn’t my aim; that is not what is called mymétierin life.”I sighed.“You have made me so happy that I should be happy to do what I could to pleaseyou, and to bring that one very slow smile to your so grave face, and to let your eyes open wide and look into my face so that I should see the lurking goodness within, but it is too troublesome.”“Riki, there is something I must say to you.”“Why that tone of suffering? I hope it isn’t of the so disagreeable nature.”“I can’t help it if it is. Do you know that you have done something very wrong?”She clasped her hands and looked at me with sad pathos.“Why speak of that?” she said. “Is it to be expected that I should always do what we call right?”“Not always; but it is expected ofeveryone to be straight and upright and above anything mean. A girl of honour always expects to be that.”“Would you mind very much if you were to repeat once more your so difficult remark?”I did repeat it.“But straight,” said Riki—“straight? That means a line. I make it difficult in my drawing. My line is always what you call wobbly.”I could not help laughing.“There, now, you are much more of the agreeable. What would you say to me?”I felt that I must indeed speak very plainly to this girl.“Listen,” I said. “You know the rules with regard to letter-writing.”She understood me well enough now. The colour left her cheeks and fluttered back again like a waving flag; her lips were slightly parted; she looked at me with wide-open eyes.“You know the rules,” I said. “No girl—no German girl, or Italian girl, or French girl, or Dutch girl, or any girl in the school—without the consent of her parents, or the special leave of the Baroness, is allowed to post letters except through the post-box in the hall.”“Oh, that is very nice,” she said—“very nice.”She waited expectantly.“You know what I mean.”“But I don’t post letters except in the way that is what is called legitimate.”“Riki, where is the good of prevaricating?”“I know not what you call pre-vare-cating. I never heard the word.”“Listen to me,” I said. “You had no right to ask me to post the letters for you.”“What would poor, poor Heinrich do if you had not?” she said. “What do we not owe you, you kind English girl, with the so kind, good face? You have our great gratitude.”“I don’t want your gratitude,” I said. “You did wrong to ask me. I would not do wrong for all the world—I mean wrong like this—quite wrong; and it was wrong of you to tempt me. I did not know; I was unaware of the rule; but even so, I was silly, and you will quite understand that I will not do it any more.”She took my hand and stroked it very gently. After a silence of two or three minutes, during which I hoped to get a full explanation from her, she raised her eyes and said very gently:“What about the great prizes on the great day of the break-up, and the beautiful Easter lilies that we are each presented with before the Easter services? Think you not that will be a very beautiful occasion for us all?”“I don’t know,” I answered. “I may not be here for Easter.”She looked at me with a startled expression. After a minute’s pause she began again in a very inconsequent way to rattle off some news with regard to the school. It was not until her visit was very nearly over that she said:“Once is good, twice is better, but the third is best. If your friend, the kind and gracious Hermione, goes out, will she not drop this letter into the post-box?”“She will not,” I replied.“And why? It is only to poor Heinrich. May he not receive this letter, this note of so true feeling from one he regards? May it not be put into the box?”“There is no reason why Heinrich, whoever he is, should not hear from you twice every day as far as I am concerned,” I said; “but I will not post it, nor will Hermione.”“I know; but you cannot tell the mind of your friend.”“I know she will not do it, Riki.”Riki considered for a minute; then she put the note again into her pocket.“Very well,” she said. “I little guessed that you would have a heart so hard, instead of soft and overflowing with the love for the German Fatherland.”

I cannot give all the particulars with regard to my life at the school, which was called Villa Bella Vista, although I cannot tell why; perhaps because from the upper windows you could catch a glimpse of the Champs Élysées. Be that as it may, it was in some ways a Bella Vista for me, a very great change from my old life in the dark house near the ancient college, from poverty to luxury, from dullness to sunshine, from the commonplace school to one which was the best that it was possible for a school to be. The Baroness von Gablestein was a woman of great integrity of mind and great uprightness of bearing, and her strong personality she managed more or less to impress on all the girls. Of course, there were black sheep in this fold, as there must be black sheep in every fold; but Hermione and I soon found our niche, and made friends with some of the nicest girls. We liked our lessons; we took kindly to French and German; Italian would follow presently. French and German were now the order of the day. In short, we were contented.

We had not been a fortnight at the school Bella Vista before we began to feel that we had always lived there. Were we not part and parcel of the house? Were not its interests ours, the girls who lived there our friends, and the life we lived the only one worth living? We did not acknowledge to ourselves that we felt like this, but nevertheless we did.

As to Augusta—well, for the first few days she was as grumpy and unsociable as girl could be. Then there came a change over her, and I knew quite well what had caused it. The post was delivered in the evening, and there was a letter addressed to Augusta. She took it up languidly. She seemed to feel no interest whatever in anything. I watched her without daring to appear to do so. We were in our own little sitting-room at that time, and Rosalind Mayhew was having supper with us. This treat was always allowed on Saturday evenings. The girls could ask one another to have supper, only giving directions downstairs with regard to the transference of the food to the different rooms. Rosalind was our guest on this occasion.

Augusta laid her letter by her plate; she put one hand on the table, and presently took up the letter and glanced at it again. I did not dare to say, “Won’t you read it?” for had I done so that would have provoked her into putting it into her pocket, and not glancing at it perhaps until the following morning, or goodness knows when. So, glancing at Hermione, I proposed that those who had finished supper should go and stand on the balcony for a little. We all went except Augusta, who remained behind. I kept one ear listening while I chatted with my companions. It seemed to me that I certainlydidhear the rustle of paper—the sort of rustle that somewhat stiff paper would make when it is taken out of its envelope. Then there was utter stillness, and afterwards a wild rush and a door slammed. I looked into the sitting-room. It was empty.

“She has read it, has she not?” said Hermione.

“Oh, hush, hush!” I whispered. “Don’t say a word.”

“Are you talking about that queer, half-mad girl?” said Rosalind.

“Oh, I’m sure she will be all right in the future,” I said.

Rosalind changed the conversation to something else.

“By the way, Dumps, Comtesse Riki has taken a most violent fancy to you.”

“What! to me?” I asked.

“Yes; and the Baroness Elfreda to Hermione.”

Now, Comtesse Riki was a very delicately made, exquisitely pretty girl, of the fairest German type. Elfreda, on the contrary, was short and exceedingly fat, with a perfectly square face, high cheek-bones, and a quantity of hay-coloured hair which she wore in two very tight plaits strained back from her face.

Hermione shrugged her shoulders.

“They’re both awfully nice; don’t you think so?” said Rosalind.

“I have scarcely given them a thought,” I answered.

My mind was still dwelling on the letter which Augusta had received. Presently Rosalind left us, and Hermione and I wondered what the result would be.

“Go to her door and knock, and see if she will come out and tell us; won’t you, Dumps?” said Hermione.

I did go and knock.

“Yes, dear?” said Augusta’s voice. It was quite bright and absolutely changed.

“Aren’t you coming out to stand on the balcony a little, and to chat? Do come, please.”

“Not to-night, dear; I am very busy.”

Still that new, wonderful, exceedingly cheerful voice.

“The spell has worked,” I said to Hermione when I returned to her.

We neither of us saw Augusta again until the next morning, and then there was a marvellous change in her. She did not tell us what had caused it. To begin with, she was neatly dressed; to follow, she ate an excellent breakfast; and again, wonder of wonders! she applied herself with extreme and passionate diligence to her French and German lessons. She looked up when her mistress spoke; she no longer indulged in silence broken only by rhapsodies of passionate snatches of verse from her favourite authors. She was altogether a changed Augusta. I did not say a word to her on the subject, and I cautioned Hermione not to breathe what I had done.

“If she thinks father has written to her on his own account the spell will work, and she will be saved,” I said.

It was not until a fortnight later that Augusta said to me in a very gentle tone, “I see daylight. How very naughty I was when I first came! How badly I did behave! But now a guiding hand has been stretched out, and I know what I am expected to do.”

I jumped up and kissed her.

“I am glad,” I said.

“You cannot be as glad as I am,” she answered; and she took both my hands in one of hers and looked into my face, while tears rose to her bright, rather sunken eyes. “To think thatheshould take the trouble to write!”

I ran away. I did not want to be unkind, and truly did not mean to; but Augusta’s manner, notwithstanding the reform in her character, was almost past bearing.

“Poor, dear old father!” I said afterwards to Hermione, “he can little realise what a fearful responsibility he has in life—the whole of Augusta’s future—and just because he is a clever lecturer. I really cannot understand it.”

“Nor I,” said Hermione. “I myself think his speeches are rather dull; but I suppose I have a different order of mind.”

I remember quite well that on that occasion we girls were permitted to go for a delightful walk into the Bois de Boulogne. We went, of course, with some of the governesses; but when we got there we were allowed a certain amount of freedom—for instance, we could choose our own companions and walk with whom we pleased. We were just leaving the house on this occasion when Comtesse Riki came up to me and asked if I would walk with her. I acceded at once, although I had hoped for a long walk with Hermione, as I had received a budget of home news on that day, and I wanted to talk it over with her; last, but not least, there had come a voluminous letter from Lilian St. Leger. It was a little provoking, but Riki’s very pretty blue eyes, her pathetic mouth, and sweet smile conquered. At the same instant Baroness Elfreda flew up to Hermione and tucked her podgy hand inside the girl’s arm.

“I couldn’t walk with you, Dumps,” she said, “for a dumpy girl couldn’t walk with another dumpy girl—so I want to be your friend, a sweet, slight, graceful English girl.”

Hermione consented with what patience she could, and we started off on our walk. While we were in the town we had, of course, to walk two by two; but presently, in a special and rather retired part of the gardens, the governesses were less particular, and each couple was allowed to keep a little away from the other.

“Now, that’s a comfort,” said Riki. “I have so much I want to ask you.”

“What about?” I said.

“About your so delightful English ways. You have much of the freedom, have you not?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Oh, but you must! Think now; no girl here, nor in my country, nor in any other, I think, on the Continent, would be allowed to go about unattended—not at least before her marriage.”

“But,” I answered, “we don’t think about getting married at all in England—I mean girls of my age.”

“If you don’t think it impertinent, would you tell me what your age may be?”

I said I should be sixteen in May.

“But surely you will think of your marriage within about a year or two, will you not?”

I laughed.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Really, Comtesse, I cannot understand you.”

“Fray don’t call me that; call me Riki. I like you so very much; you are different from others.”

“Every one tells me that,” I answered, a little bitterness in my tone.

“You have the goodness within—you perhaps have not the beauty without; but what does that matter when goodness within is more valuable? It is but to look at you to know that you have got that.”

“If you were really to see into my heart, Riki, you would perceive that I am an exceedingly selfish and very ungrateful girl.”

“Oh dear!” said the Comtesse Riki, “what is it to be what you call ungrateful?”

“Not to be thankful for the blessings that are given you,” I made answer.

She glanced at me in a puzzled way.

“Some day, perhaps,” I said, “you will visit our England and see for yourself what the life is like.”

“I should like it,” she replied—“that is, after my nuptials.”

“But you are only a child yourself.”

“Not a child—I am sixteen; I shall be seventeen in a year; then I shall leave school and go home, and—and—”

“Begin your fun,” I said.

“Oh no,” she answered—“not exactly. I may go to a few of the dances and take atour(dance) with the young men—I should, of course, have many partners; but what is that? Then I shall become affianced, and my betrothal will be a very great event; and afterwards there will be my trousseau, and the preparing for my home, and then my marriage with the husband whom my parents have chosen for me.”

“And you look forward to that?” I said.

“Of course; what else does any girl look forward to?”

I could not speak at all for a minute; then I said, “I am truly thankful I am not a German.”

She smiled.

“If we,” she said slowly, “have one thing to be more—what you call grateful for—than another, it is that we don’t belong to your so strange country of England. Your coldness, and your long time of remaining without yourdotand your betrothal and your so nécessaire husband, is too terrible for any girl in the Fatherland even to contemplate the pain.”

“Oh!” I said, feeling quite angry, “we pityyou. You see, Comtesse, you and I can never agree.”

She smiled and shook her little head.

“But what would you do,” she said a few minutes afterwards, “if these things were not arranged? You might reach, say, twenty, or even twenty-one or twenty-two, and—”

“Well, suppose I did reach twenty-one or twenty-two; surely those years are not so awful?”

“But to be unbetrothed at twenty-one or twenty-two,” she continued. “Why, do you not know that at twenty-five a girl—why, she is lost.”

“Lost?” I cried.

“Well, what we call put aside—of no account. She doesn’t go to dances. She stays at home with the old parents. The young sister supersedes her; she goes out all shining and beautiful, and the adored one comes her way, and she is betrothed, and gets presents and thedotand the beautiful wedding, and the home where the house linen is so marvellous and the furniture so good. Then for the rest of her days she is a good housewife, and looks after the comforts of the lord of the house.”

“The lord of the house?” I gasped.

“Her husband. Surely it is her one and only desire to think of his comforts. What is she but second to him? Oh! the chosen wife is happy, and fulfils her mission. But the unfortunate maiden who reaches the age of twenty-five, why, there is nothing for her—nothing!”

The Comtesses pretty checks were flushed with vivid rose; her blue eyes darkened with horror.

“Poor maiden of twenty-five!” I said. “Why, in England you are only supposed to be properly grown-up about then.”

“But surely,” said the Comtesse, glancing at me and shrugging her shoulders—“you surely do not mean to say that at that advanced age marriages take place?”

“Much more than before a girl is twenty-five. But really,” I added, “I don’t want to talk about marriages anddots; I am only a schoolgirl.”

The Comtesse laughed.

“Why will you so speak? What else has a girl of my great nation to think of and talk of? And the mademoiselles here—what have they to think of and to talk of? Oh! it is all the same; we live for it—ourdot, and our future husbands, and the home where he is lord and we his humble servant.”

“It doesn’t sound at all interesting,” I said; and after that my conversation with Comtesse Riki languished a little.

A few days afterwards this same girl came to me when I was preparing a letter for home. I was writing in our sitting-room when she entered. She glanced quickly round her.

“It is you who have the sympathy,” she said.

“I hope so,” I answered. “What is the matter, Riki?” Her eyes were full of tears; she hastily put up her handkerchief and wiped them away.

“There is no doubt,” she said, “that you English are allowed liberties unheard-of for a German girl like me. I would beg of you to do me a great favour. I have been thinking of what you said the other day about this so great liberty of the English maidens, and the great extension of years which to them is permitted.”

“Yes, yes?” I said, and as I spoke I glanced at the gilt clock on the chiffonier.

“You are in so great a hurry, are you not?” asked Riki.

“I want to finish my letter.”

“And you will perhaps post it; is it not so?”

“Yes; I am going out with Hermione and Mademoiselle Wrex.”

“You are going, perhaps, to shops to buy things?”

“Yes. Do you want me to bring you in some chocolates?”

“Oh! that would be vare nice; but if you would, with your own letter, put this into the post also?”

As she spoke she gave me a letter addressed in the somewhat thin and pointed hand which most German girls use, and which I so cordially detested.

“It is to Heinrich,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask you; but your heart is warm, and—he suffers.”

“But why should I post it? Will you not take it downstairs and put it with the other letters in the letter-box?”

The delicate colour flew to her cheeks; her eyes were brighter than usual.

“Heinrich would not then receive it,” she answered. “You will post it—it is nécessaire for him that he gets it soon; he is in need of comfort. You will, will you not?”

I really hardly thought about the matter. I did not know why, but it did not occur to me that Riki was asking me to do anything underhand or outside the rules. She laid the letter on the table and flew away. I had just finished my own; I put it into an envelope and addressed it, and taking Riki’s letter also, I put on my outdoor things and went downstairs to meet Hermione and Mademoiselle Wrex.

It was now a very bitter day in March. We had been at school for two months. The time had flown. I was a healthy and very happy girl.

Mademoiselle Wrex said, “We must walk quickly to keep ourselves warm in this so bitter north-east wind.”

We all walked quickly, with our hands in our muffs, and as we were passing a pillar-box I dropped the letters in.

“Now that is off my mind,” I thought, with a sigh of relief.

“How did you manage to write two letters?” asked Hermione. “You were in such a fearful fuss getting through your one!”

I made no answer. Something the next moment distracted our attention, and we absolutely forgot the circumstance.

It was not until about a week afterwards that I observed a change in Comtesse Riki. She was very pale, and coughed now and then. She no longer took interest in her work, and often sat for a long time pensive and melancholy, her eyes fixed on my face. One bitterly cold day I found her alone in thesalon, where we seldom sat; for although there was what was called central heating all over the house, it was not often put on to any great extent in thesalon. Riki had flung herself into a chair which was the reverse of comfortable. She started up when she saw me.

“Oh, you will sympathise with me in my trouble!”

“What is the matter?” I asked.

“If we might go for a little walk together.”

“But why so?” I asked. “You are not fit to go out to-day, it is so cold.”

“But the cold will revive me. Feel my hand; my pulse beats so fast.”

I took her hand; her little pulse was bounding in her slender wrist.

“I am sure you ought not to go out; indeed, you can’t.” She looked up at me imploringly. Suddenly she burst out crying.

“Oh Riki,” I said, “what is the matter?”

“If you don’t help me I shall be the most miserable girl in all the world,” she said. “And it is all your fault, too.”

“My fault?” I cried. “Why, Riki, you must be mad. Whatever have I done?”

“Well, you have told me about your so wonderful English customs, and I have been taking them to my heart; and there is Heinrich—”

“Who is Heinrich—your brother?”

She stared at me, but made no reply.

“He was the person you wrote to, was he not?”

“Oh, hush, hush! Raise not your voice to that point; some one may come in and hear.”

“And why should not people hear? I must say English girls have secrets, but not that sort,” I said, with great indignation.

“You are so bitter and so proud,” she said; “but you know not the heart-hunger.”

“Oh yes, I do!” I answered. I was thinking of my mother and her miniature, and the fading image of that loved memory in the old home. I also thought of the new step-mother. Yes, yes, I knew what heart-hunger was. My tone changed to one of pity.

“I have felt it,” I said.

“Oh, then, you have had your beloved one?”

“Indeed, yes.”

“Did I not say that of all the school it was natural I should select you to be to me a companion?”

“Can I help you?” I said.

“You can. Will you, as I am not allowed to go out, take this and put it into a letter-box?”

“But I cannot make out why there should be any trouble.”

“It is so easy, and Heinrich—the poor, the sad, the inconsolable—wants to get it at once.”

Again I was a remarkably silly girl; but I took Riki’s letter and posted it for her. She devoured me with kisses, and immediately recovered her spirits.

The next day she was better and able to go out, and when she returned home she presented me with a magnificent box of French bonbons. Now, I was exceedingly partial to those sweets. Riki often came into our little sitting-room, and all the girls began to remark on our friendship.

“It is so unlike the Comtesse Riki to take up passionately with any one girl!” said Rosalind when this sort of thing had been going on for a few weeks and we were all talking of the Easter holidays.

The great point of whether I was to go home or not had not yet been decided. Hermione knew she must remain at the school; Augusta would probably do likewise.

Rosalind went on commenting on my friendship with Riki. After a pause she said, “Of course, she has been at the school for some time; she leaves in the summer.”

“Oh!” I answered; “she told me that she would be here for another year.”

“I think it has been changed. She is not contented; the Baroness will not keep a pupil in the school who shows discontent.”

“But surely she is quite a nice girl?”

Rosalind was silent for a minute; then she said, “Perhaps I ought just to warn you, Dumps. I wouldn’t trouble myself to do so—for I make a point of never interfering between one girl and another—but as you are Lilian St. Leger’s friend, and have been specially introduced to me through her, it is but fair to say that you ought to regard the German girl from a different standpoint from the English one.”

“Certainly the German girl is different,” I said; and I laughingly repeated some of Riki’s conversation with me in the Bois de Boulogne.

“Think of any girl talking ofdots, and being betrothed, and getting married at her age!” I said.

“Oh, that isn’t a bit strange,” replied Rosalind; “they all do it. These German girls get married very young, and the marriages are arranged for them by their parents; they never have anything to say to them themselves.”

“Well, it is horrible,” I said, “and I told her so.”

“Did you?” said Rosalind very slowly. “Well, perhaps that accounts.” She looked very grave. After a minute she bent towards me and said in a low tone—too low even for Hermione to hear—“Whatever you do, don’t post letters for her.”

I started and felt myself turning very white.

“You won’t, will you?” said Rosalind, giving my arm a little squeeze.

I made no reply.

“It will be madness if you do. You cannot possibly tell what it means, Dumps.”

“Why, is there anything very dreadful in it?”

“Dreadful? Why, the Baroness has all the letters put into a box in the hall—I mean all the foreigners’ letters—and she herself keeps the key. She opens the box to take out the letters both for the post and when they have arrived, and distributes them amongst the girls.”

“And she doesn’t do that for the English girls?”

“No—not for a few. With the consent of their parents, they are allowed to have a free correspondence.” I sat very still and quiet. One or two things were being made plain to me. After a pause I said, “I can tell you nothing, Rosalind, but I thank you very much.”

On the next day I myself was seized with the first severe cold I had had that winter; it was very bad and kept me in bed. I had been in bed all day, not feeling exactly ill, but glad of the warmth and comfort of my snug little room. Towards evening Augusta came in and asked me if I would like any friends to visit me.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered. “Of course, Hermione or you; but the others—I think not.”

“There’s that stupid girl, that pale-faced Comtesse—Riki, I think you call her—she is very anxious to come and have a chat with you.”

Now, to tell the truth, I had been feeling uncomfortable enough ever since Rosalind had spoken to me about the rule with regard to the foreign girls’ letters. The Baroness von Gablestein had every right to make what rules she liked in her own school, but I could not help thinking that it was hardly wise that such a marked distinction should be made between girls of one nationality and another. I now understood that all foreign girls’ letters were pot into the post-box in the hall, and the Baroness looked them over before they were posted. But the affair was not mine, and I should have forgotten all about it but for the very uncomfortable feeling that I myself, unwittingly, had twice broken this most solemn rule of the house, and had twice posted a letter for Riki von Kronenfel.

Now, it seemed to me that this might be a good opportunity for me to expostulate with her on the whole position, and to tell her that she had done very wrong to allow me innocently to break the rule of the house, and to assure her that under no circumstances should I be guilty of such an indiscretion again.

Augusta meanwhile seated herself comfortably by my bedside.

“Horrible,” she said—“horrible! but for the prospect of pleasing him—”

I did not pretend to misunderstand her.

“But you are really getting on splendidly, Augusta,” I said.

“Ah, yes! I should be a brute indeed did I do otherwise. And perhaps when I am sufficiently acquainted with the German tongue I may find out some of its beauties—or, rather, the beauties of its literature, for the language itself is all guttural and horrible—worse than French.”

“But surely French is very dainty?” I said.

“Dainty!” said Augusta, with scorn. “What one wants is a language of thought—a language that will show sentiment, that will reveal the depth of nature; and how, I ask you, can you find it in that frippery the French tongue?”

“I do not know,” I answered somewhat wearily.

“I like Molière and the writings of some of the other great French poets very much indeed.”

“Well,” said Augusta, “I have got to study a great quantity of German for to-morrow morning. I must go into my room and tackle it. The Professor said I was not to write to him, but I keep his treasured letter near my heart; but if you are writing home you might say that Augusta is not ungrateful. Do you ever have the great privilege of writing direct to your father?”

“I could, of course, write to father any day,” I said; “but as a matter of fact I don’t.”

“But why not?”

“It would worry the poor man.”

“But you might write just once to give him my message.”

“I will, Augusta, if you will leave me now.”

“But why do you want to get rid of me? How like you are to him! You have just that same bluntness and the same determination. You interest me at times profoundly.”

“Well,” I said, “if I interest you to the extent of getting you to start your German it would be better.”

“All right; but what am I to say to that silly Comtesse?”

“Tell her that I will see her by-and-by.”

“You had much better not. She is not worth a grain of salt. A little piece of conceit!”

Augusta left the room. She had not been gone many minutes before there came a tap at the door, and the Comtesse, dressed in the palest blue and looking remarkably pretty, entered.

“Ah!” she said, “you have caught cold from me, you poor English girl, and I am so disconsolate.”

She sank down at the foot of the bed and fixed her bright eyes on my face.

“You are much better,” I said.

“Ah, yes, that is so. I am what is called more spirited, and it is because of you; but for you I should be indeed disconsolate. I might have chosen the stupid, the so weary life of the good German housewife, instead of—”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I cannot say more. There are secrets which can be guessed but which must not be spoken.”

“Riki,” I said, “I do wish you would give me a right good lesson in talking German.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t—to give you a lesson. But why should I thus discompose myself?”

“It would be a good and worthy object for one girl to help another.”

“I want not to think of objects good and worthy. Why should I? That isn’t my aim; that is not what is called mymétierin life.”

I sighed.

“You have made me so happy that I should be happy to do what I could to pleaseyou, and to bring that one very slow smile to your so grave face, and to let your eyes open wide and look into my face so that I should see the lurking goodness within, but it is too troublesome.”

“Riki, there is something I must say to you.”

“Why that tone of suffering? I hope it isn’t of the so disagreeable nature.”

“I can’t help it if it is. Do you know that you have done something very wrong?”

She clasped her hands and looked at me with sad pathos.

“Why speak of that?” she said. “Is it to be expected that I should always do what we call right?”

“Not always; but it is expected ofeveryone to be straight and upright and above anything mean. A girl of honour always expects to be that.”

“Would you mind very much if you were to repeat once more your so difficult remark?”

I did repeat it.

“But straight,” said Riki—“straight? That means a line. I make it difficult in my drawing. My line is always what you call wobbly.”

I could not help laughing.

“There, now, you are much more of the agreeable. What would you say to me?”

I felt that I must indeed speak very plainly to this girl.

“Listen,” I said. “You know the rules with regard to letter-writing.”

She understood me well enough now. The colour left her cheeks and fluttered back again like a waving flag; her lips were slightly parted; she looked at me with wide-open eyes.

“You know the rules,” I said. “No girl—no German girl, or Italian girl, or French girl, or Dutch girl, or any girl in the school—without the consent of her parents, or the special leave of the Baroness, is allowed to post letters except through the post-box in the hall.”

“Oh, that is very nice,” she said—“very nice.”

She waited expectantly.

“You know what I mean.”

“But I don’t post letters except in the way that is what is called legitimate.”

“Riki, where is the good of prevaricating?”

“I know not what you call pre-vare-cating. I never heard the word.”

“Listen to me,” I said. “You had no right to ask me to post the letters for you.”

“What would poor, poor Heinrich do if you had not?” she said. “What do we not owe you, you kind English girl, with the so kind, good face? You have our great gratitude.”

“I don’t want your gratitude,” I said. “You did wrong to ask me. I would not do wrong for all the world—I mean wrong like this—quite wrong; and it was wrong of you to tempt me. I did not know; I was unaware of the rule; but even so, I was silly, and you will quite understand that I will not do it any more.”

She took my hand and stroked it very gently. After a silence of two or three minutes, during which I hoped to get a full explanation from her, she raised her eyes and said very gently:

“What about the great prizes on the great day of the break-up, and the beautiful Easter lilies that we are each presented with before the Easter services? Think you not that will be a very beautiful occasion for us all?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I may not be here for Easter.”

She looked at me with a startled expression. After a minute’s pause she began again in a very inconsequent way to rattle off some news with regard to the school. It was not until her visit was very nearly over that she said:

“Once is good, twice is better, but the third is best. If your friend, the kind and gracious Hermione, goes out, will she not drop this letter into the post-box?”

“She will not,” I replied.

“And why? It is only to poor Heinrich. May he not receive this letter, this note of so true feeling from one he regards? May it not be put into the box?”

“There is no reason why Heinrich, whoever he is, should not hear from you twice every day as far as I am concerned,” I said; “but I will not post it, nor will Hermione.”

“I know; but you cannot tell the mind of your friend.”

“I know she will not do it, Riki.”

Riki considered for a minute; then she put the note again into her pocket.

“Very well,” she said. “I little guessed that you would have a heart so hard, instead of soft and overflowing with the love for the German Fatherland.”

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