MADAME GENTILLE.
“Pourquoi me regardez vous comme cela? Est-ce que je vous ai fait
quelque chose?—Non, répondit-il. Certes, il n’avait rien
contre elle. Loin de là.”
Les Misérables.
THE band was playing on the “Place” at Hivèritz; it was a
beautiful spring-like afternoon, though only the middle of
January. A goodly number of the visitors, and many of the residents
too, were to be seen promenading up and down, or sitting at the open
windows of the hotels and other large houses which overlooked the
square,—the West End of the little town.
A girl of twelve years old, or thereabouts, was crossing the quieter
and less frequented side of the place with a young lady in deep
mourning; the young lady was tall and slight, fair hair peeped out
from under her crape-trimmed black hat, she had blue eyes, and a pale
clear complexion.
“English, of course; I don’t think I have seen her here
before,” said an American lady to the gentleman she was walking
with, as they passed the fair-haired girl.
“New-comers, I dare say,” replied the gentleman carelessly.
“Rather pretty, isn’t she?”
“I didn’t notice her much. They cannot be anything
particular,—not people of rank, that is to say,” said the
daughter of the nation where rank is supposed to be unknown, with
some contempt in her tone, “or we should have heard of their
arrival.”
But the blue-eyed English girl, innocent of being classed among the
nobodies of conceited little Hivèritz, walked on quietly, enjoying
the sweet air and the sunshine, the mountains in the distance, the
music near at hand.
“C’est bien ici, ma cousine, n’est-ce pas?” said her little
companion. “Will you not stay for a few minutes? We can get chairs
for a sou each; it is so seldom I can hear the music.”
She looked up entreatingly. She was not a pretty child, but her face
was frank and merry, her dark eyes bright and honest.
“I don’t mind staying a little, if your mother will not be
wondering what has become of us,” said the young lady. “Don’t
you often come here when the band plays, Eudoxie?”
Eudoxie shook her head. “Mamma is quite pleased for me to come,”
she said, “but it is not often there is any one to bring me. When
Geneviève was at home, she often came to the Place, but she would
not let me come; she said children were tiresome. She came with
Stéphanie Rou sille, or the Demoiselles Frogé. I am not sorry that
Geneviève is married and away, ma cousine; she sends me pretty
presents now, and I like you better for my sister.”
“Ma cousine” smiled. “Don’t you know, little Eudoxie, that
comparisons are odious?” she said playfully. “However, I am glad
you think I shall do for a sister. Who is that lady?” she inquired,
as at that moment Eudoxie nodded and smiled to a pleasant-looking,
middle-aged little English woman in orthodox winter costume of velvet
and sealskin, who was passing by.
“I know not,” replied Eudoxie, “I know not her name; I call her
Madame Gentille, she always smiles so nicely. She is English, she
lives in the Rue St. Louis, and I pass her house in the morning, on
my way to school, and she nods to me. She has a husband who is very
old, I think, for he never goes out, except in a carriage, and the
blinds are never drawn up.”
“Poor thing!” said Cicely compassionately. Her few weeks at
Hivèritz had already accustomed her to the sight of some melancholy
little family groups. “Perhaps he is not very old, but very ill,
Eudoxie.”
“If he were very ill she would look more sad,” said Eudoxie, who
had evidently a theory of her own on the subject of her unknown
friend’s domestic history. “She does not look sad, she has rosy
cheeks, and she is plump and gay. Des fois I hear her laugh when I
pass her house and the window of her salon is open. And one morning
she was at the door, talking to the confectioner’s boy, who had
brought some cakes; she offered me one, it was a macaroon. She spoke
with un accent affreux, but she smiled, and the macaroon was very
good.”
“And so you call her Madame Gentille?” said Cicely, amused by the
child’s chatter. “She has a pleasant face certainly; but I think,
Eudoxie,” she went on, “it must be getting late; see, the
musicians are preparing to go. Aunt Caroline will be expecting us.”
Aunt Caroline was expecting them. Her kind face was at the door to
welcome them, when the cousins reached the little courtyard of No.
31, Rue de la Croix blanche. It was pleasant to be welcomed thus,
thought motherless Cicely.
“Dear aunt,” she said impulsively as she met Madame Casalis, and
she held up her face for a kiss.
“Dear Cicely!” replied Eudoxie’s mother. Then they went into
the little drawing-room together, while the child ran off to her own
quarters.
“It is such a happiness to me to have you with us,” said Madame
Casalis; “I can not tell you how great a pleasure it is.”
Cicely looked at her gratefully. Already, though barely a month had
passed since the girl’s introduction to her mother’s cousin,
these two understood each other well.
“It is so pleasant to me to feel I have still some one belonging to
my mother who cares for me,” said Cicely softly.
“I have a letter from Geneviève to-day,” said Madame Casalis.
“It came while you were out.”
“What does she say?” inquired Cicely. “They are well I hope?”
Her tone was quite without constraint. She was fully in possession of
Madame Casalis’s feelings on the subject of her daughter’s
marriage, and so much of the truth as it was right that the mother
should now know, Cicely had gently and considerately told her, in
answer to her earnest request to have the whole explained. For
Geneviève had not, after all, been as frank to her mother as she had
promised; her view of her own conduct had altered to some extent when
she found herself free of Greystone associations, and her account of
her engagement to Mr. Fawcett and the events which had led to it, had
left Madame Casalis uneasy and dissatisfied.
“It was no use my pressing her to tell me more,” the mother said
to Cicely; “we were together so short a time, and I could not bear
to cloud the few last days. Besides, what was done, was done. But I
have longed to speak of it to you, to ask your forgiveness for the
suffering I could not but fear my child had been partly the cause
of.”
And Cicely had soothed poor Caroline’s distress even while not
concealing that her suspicions had been well founded—and the
friendship between the two grew and strengthened daily.
Madame Casalis drew Geneviève’s letter out of its envelope again
as she replied to Cicely’s inquiry.
“She does not say very much. Her letters are never very long,”
she sighed a little. “They have had a great many visitors to spend
Christmas. Now they are gone and Geneviève finds Barnstay dull
triste. Her husband she says is always at the hunt—she wishes it
were already the season to visit ‘town.’ ‘Londres,’ she
means, I suppose? Did Mr. Fawcett always go so much to the hunt?”
she inquired, looking up from the letter to which she had been
referring as she in formed Cicely of its contents.
“He used to hunt a good deal. Not constantly,” replied Cicely.
“I am sorry if Geneviève is dull,” she added regretfully.
“I wish that she had children,” said Madame Casalis.
“Yes,” said Cicely, “when people have children I cannot
understand their ever being dull. I remember mamma telling me what a
comfort my sister Amiel was to her long ago, when she was lonely and
unhappy. She must have been very unhappy during her first husband’s
life. Did you ever see her then, Aunt Caroline?”
Madame Casalis shook her head. “No,” she said, “I knew her as a
girl, but not again till she was married to your father. Her first
husband was not good; she was wrong to marry him, but it was not all
her fault.”
“Her father would not let her marry papa, because he was then poor,
before his brother died,” said Cicely.
“Yes—and your father was proud—he went away and Helen knew not
why, and in her sorrow they persuaded her to marry Mr. Bruce. And she
was very unhappy. But afterwards, when in the end she met again
Colonel Methvyn and they were married, she was very happy.”
“Yes,” said Cicely, “they were very happy. She never forgot how
papa had thought of her always and never dreamt of marrying any one
else even when he became rich. It is not often one hears of such love
as that. Yes, they were very happy.”
“Yet she had great trouble first,” said Madame Casalis gently.
“I should like you too to be happy like her some day, Cicely.”
Cicely shook her head. “I don’t think it is likely,” she
replied. “I almost feel as if I were too old for anything of that
kind again, do you know, aunt? Troubles make one feel old.”
“My Madame Gentille does not look old, and I am sure she has
troubles,” observed Miss Eudoxie, who entered the room as Cicely
was uttering her last sentence; “she has nice fat rosy cheeks, and
her hair is not grey.”
“Whom is the child chattering about?” said Madame Casalis
inquiringly.
“An English lady whom she has taken a fancy to,” said Cicely.
“We saw her to-day in the Place, and Eudoxie and she smiled and
nodded to each other like old acquaintances.”
“It is the lady in the Rue St. Louis, mamma,” said Eudoxie.
“The lady who gave you macaroons? Oh! yes, I remember. I wonder who
she is,” said Madame Casalis. “It is not often we make
acquaintance with any of the visitors,” she went on, turning to
Cicely. “Their world is a different one from ours, though sometimes
my husband has been asked to call upon Protestant families, coming
here for the winter. But just now I think we have no acquaintance
among the visitors at all.”
“So Madame Gentille will probably remain Madame Gentille to the end
of the story, Eudoxie,” said Cicely.
“Well,” replied the child philosophically, “I don’t mind. It
is a nice name for her.”
But fate had not so willed it. A few days later when Cicely came
downstairs one morning, she found Monsieur Casalis frowning over a
letter which, notwithstanding his utmost efforts, he was unable to
understand.
“Caroline,” he exclaimed, without looking up, “I have an
English letter here which I cannot read. Translate it then for me, I
pray thee.”
“It is not Aunt Caroline,” said Cicely. “Shall I do instead,
Monsieur Casalis?”
“Thank you, my child,” said the pasteur in a tone of relief,
pushing back his spectacles and beginning to stir his coffee,
“thank you well. Yes, if you please,” and he held out the letter.
“It is forwarded to me by a friend in Paris, Monsieur Carraud, who
has received it from some one of his acquaintance in England; a lady,
is it not?”
“Yes,” said Cicely, translating it as she spoke. “Yes, it is
from a Mrs. Hulme, asking Monsieur Carraud if he has any friends at
Hivèritz who would be so kind as to show some attention to a cousin
of hers, a Mrs. Crichton, who, with her brother, is spending the
winter here. They are quite strangers to Hivèritz, Mrs. Hulme says,
and one or other evidently an invalid. It is a very short note,
written hurriedly; I think that is all she says.”
“Does she not give the address—let me see, my dear,” asked
Monsieur Casalis, looking over Cicely’s shoulder. “Ah! yes, here
it is, Madame Creech—Creesh—how say you? Quel nom barbare! Madame
Creeshton, Rue St. Louis, No. 14. Ah! yes, I know the apartement.
Caroline, my friend,” he continued, as his wife came into the room,
“here is something that thou must do to oblige our friend Monsieur
Carraud.”
“I shall be very glad to call on the lady,” said Madame Casilis,
when the matter was explained to her, “but I fear there is not much
that we can do besides.”
The pasteur and his wife were kind hearted people, who never lost
time in doing any little service to others that might be in their
power. They called that very afternoon on the lady with the barbarous
name in the Rue St. Louis. When they came home Madame Casalis was
quite excited.
“Imagine, Cicely,” she exclaimed, “is it not amusing—this
Madame Creetonne is no other than Eudoxie’s Madame Gentille?
Eudoxie will be quite delighted. We discovered it at once by her
telling me she had made no friends at Hivèritz except one little
girl. ‘To whom,’ said I, ‘you gave a macaroon, was it not?’
She looked astonished; then we laughed at the coincidence, but it
made us feel quite friendly. In general I feel somewhat génée with
the English one meets here. They are so rich, so unlike us, but this
Madame Creetonne is not so; she is most simple and amiable. She wants
Eudoxie to go to see her to-morrow. I told her also about you,
Cicely, that I had a cousin, an English lady, visiting me—she was
so pleased to hear you were English.”
Madame Casalis stopped at last, quite out of breath.
“Do you think she would like me to go to see her?” said Cicely
good-naturedly. “I will take Eudoxie there to-morrow if you like,
aunt. She must be dull, poor thing. Is it she that is ill? She does
not look so.”
“No, oh! no—it is not she. It is her brother. We did not see
him.”
“Then he is Eudoxie’s old husband.”
“Yes,” said Madame Casalis, smiling. “Eudoxie is wrong for
once. Madame Creetonne is a widow. I know not if her brother be old.
He is a very clever man; a writer, I think, she said. He overworked
himself and was very ill. Now he is better, but the overwork has
weakened his eye sight. They came here because he had been in a warm
country, and they feared England for him this winter. He is writing
some book now, his sister told me. Monsieur Casalis is going to lend
him some dictionnaires he is in want of, which they could not get at
the librairie here.”
“Yes,” said Monsieur Casalis. “He must be a very learned man,
ce Monsieur Creetonne.”
“Is his name Crichton too?” said Cicely. “I thought you said
she was his married sister.”
“Of course!” exclaimed Madame Casalis. “I forgot. No, his name
cannot be the same, but we did not hear what it was.”
Armed with two or three learned-looking volumes—for in his humble
way Monsieur Casalis was something of a bookworm—Cicely and her
little cousin set off the next morning to call on Mrs. Crichton. She
was at home, and evidently very glad to see them.
“So kind of you to come to see me so soon, Miss——, and to bring
your little cousin,” she hurried on, trying to slur over her
ignorance of Cicely’s name. “I am particularly glad you have
come, because, do you know, it is very stupid of me; but I generally
am very stupid about such things.” She sighed plaintively. “I
don’t know what becomes of my head I am sure. What was I saying?
Oh! yes to be sure, it was about quite forgetting to ask
madame—your mamma’s, I mean” (to Eudoxie)—“to ask
madame’s name and address when she was so kind as to come to see me
yesterday. Not that I should have required to ask it, but I am so
stupid at catching French names. And so you see if you had not come
to see me, I could not have come to see you till I had written to ask
Mrs. Hulme to get your address. How absurd that would have been to be
sure!”
She laughed merrily. Her laugh and voice were both pretty and
musical, and there was an infectious sort of youthfulness about
her—a genuine naïveté—which was not without its charm. She was
small and plump, and still pretty, though no longer young; and though
Eudoxie had considerable difficulty in interpreting her rather
roundabout way of talking, she remained decidedly of opinion that her
soubriquet had been well bestowed.
“I have got some fresh macaroons on purpose for Eudoxie,” said
Mrs. Crichton when she had mastered her visitors’ names in full.
“What a nice confectioner’s there is here! Indeed, the shops are
very good, though my brother feels the want of a library greatly. So
kind of Monsieur Casalis to have sent him those dreadful books.“She
eyed the volumes as she spoke with mingled complacency and aversion.
“That will be some hard work for me,” she said, turning to Cicely
with a smile.
“For you!” exclaimed Cicely in surprise.
“Yes. I have to spell out all manner of things I don’t understand
in the least for Ed—for my brother. He is not allowed to use his
eyes in reading or writing at all yet. To tell you the truth, I was
rather pleased when he was stopped short for want of these books. I
am sure he is beginning to work too hard again; but of course I could
not refuse Monsieur Casalis’s offer of them—so kind. I had the
names down on a bit of paper to try for them at the bookseller’s
when he called, you know. And of course it’s very worrying for a
clever person like my brother to have to be dependent on any one so
out-of-the-way stupid as I am.”
Cicely smiled. “I am sure you are very patient, at any rate,” she
said.
“He is,” said Mrs. Crichton eagerly. “Would you believe it,”
she went on, turning to some papers that lay on a side-table, “I
have three times tried to make a clear copy of these notes and
lists—it’s something botanical—and each time when he has just
taken a peep at it from under his shade, poor fellow, just to make
sure it was all right, he has found some perfectly horrible mistake
that could not possibly be corrected—not to speak of my
handwriting, which is fearful, as you see.” She held out the
manuscript to Cicely. “They have to be in London the end of this
week,” she went on in a tone of despair. “I was just setting to
work at them again when you came in; but it’s no good. I shall
never get them done.”
Cicely was examining the papers critically. “Your writing is
perhaps rather too large for this sort of thing—” she began. “I
should think it was—too large and too sprawly and too
everything,” interrupted Mrs. Crichton. It’s dreadful, and so is
my spelling. I never can spell correctly—Wednesday and business and
spinach I always carry about with me in my pocket-book—not that the
spelling matters for these things, as they are all in Latin.”
“I think—you won’t think me presumptuous for saying so, I
hope,” said Cicely “I think I could help you with these, if you
like. I have had a great deal of copying out to do long ago for my
father, and I can write a very clerkly hand when I try. Do you think
Mr.—, your brother, would be afraid to trust me with these papers?
I can easily have them ready for to-morrow’s post, if that will
do.”
Mrs. Crichton’s face beamed with delight. “How kind of you—how
very kind of you!” she exclaimed. “I am sure you could do them
beautifully. You look so clever—no, I don’t mean clever. Clever
people are ugly; but you look so wise—dear me!—what can I
say?—that sounds like an owl.”
“Never mind,” said Cicely, laughing. “Will you ask your brother
if he will try me?”
“Of course I will, this very moment,” said the little lady, and
off she went. Within five minutes she returned in triumph. “He is
delighted,” she said. “I knew he would be. He is coming to thank
you himself, and to point out one or two things. He does not like
seeing any one now; his eyes make him feel nervous, poor fellow. He
would not come in to see Monsieur and Madame Casalis yesterday, but
he is so pleased about his papers, he proposed himself to come and
thank you.”
“I hope it will not annoy him,” said Cicely, a little uneasy at
the idea of the learned man’s personal injunctions. But “Oh! no,
he didn’t mind a bit,” answered Mrs. Crichton in so well assured
a tone that Cicely dismissed her misgivings.
There had certainly been nothing in his sister’s explanation to
make him “mind a bit.”
“There’s a young lady here who would like to do your copying,
Edmond,” had been her very lucid account of Cicely’s offer.
“She’s English, though she’s a niece of that nice old French
clergyman who called yesterday. She looks clever. I am sure she would
do it nicely. She says she is quite accustomed to it.”
“Do you mean that she would do it for nothing?” inquired Mr.
Guildford. “I could not put myself under such an obligation to a
stranger. But perhaps she would let me pay for it. Many poor ladies
make money by copying; and I dare say if she be longs to the family
of a French pasteur, she is not rich. Do you think that she meant
that she would take payment for it?”
“No,” said Bessie doubtfully. “She doesn’t look like that.”
“What does she look like? Is she a governess, or anything of that
kind? What did she say?”
“She only offered out of kindness. She had heard about your eyes,
and I—I told her how stupid I was,” admitted Mrs. Crichton.
“You had much better come and see for yourself, Edmond.”
“Very well—perhaps it would be better. Of course, I should be
very glad to get it well done, if this lady would not be above
letting me pay her,” he said. “But I won’t say anything about
that if she looks like a person that would be offended by such a
proposal. I’ll come in directly; and if I can arrange about it with
her, I will show her how I want it done. But I wish,” he added to
himself when his sister had left him, “I wish Bessie were less
communicative to strangers.”
Five minutes later he followed her into the drawing-room. He came in,
expecting to find Mrs. Crichton’s new acquaintance some
insignificant-looking person of the poor lady order, for,
notwithstanding Bessie’s assertion that the pasteur’s niece
“did not look like that,” his mind was prepossessed by its own
idea; nor did he attach sufficient importance to his sister’s
judgment to think much of her description. The light in the room
struck upon his eyes somewhat dazzlingly, for, out of deference to
the stranger, he had taken off the shade he usually wore. The first
object he noticed was Eudoxie seated on a low chair, consuming her
cakes with great equanimity. For a moment he glanced at her in
bewilderment. Could this be his would-be amanuensis? He looked on
beyond her to his sister for explanation, when suddenly from another
corner of the room a third person approached. Had the figure before
him been that of one risen from the dead he could hardly have been
more astonished. Instinctively he lifted his hand to his eyes, as if
suspecting them of playing him false. Was not the light deceiving
him, exaggerating some slight and superficial resemblance into the
likeness of a face whose features he believed would never to him grow
misty or confused—a face he had seen once, long, long ago it seemed
to him now, pale and wistful, with sweet sad eyes, and lips parted to
entreat his help,—the face of Cicely Methvyn as she stood in the
doorway on the night that little Charlie died. He looked again—the
illusion, if such it were, grew more perfect. He felt as if in a
dream—he was turning to seek Mrs. Crichton’s assistance, when
suddenly the spell was broken. The lady came forward quietly and
held out her hand.
“Mr. Guildford,” she said gently, and the slight colour which
rose to her cheeks helped him to realise the fact of her presence,
“you did not expect to see me here, and certainly I did not expect
to see you. How strange it is!”
But he made no movement towards her, he showed no readiness to take
her offered hand.
“Mr. Guildford,” she repeated, in her turn bewildered by a
momentary doubt as to the identity of the man before her with the
owner of the name by which she addressed him, “don’t you know
me?”
Then he started. “I could not believe it,” he exclaimed abruptly.
“You must forgive me, Miss Meth—no, you are not Miss Methvyn
now.”
Cicely’s colour deepened, but she smiled. A pleasant sincere smile
it was, though not without a certain sadness about it too.
“Yes,” she said, “I am. My name is the same any way, though it
seems as if otherwise I must be very much changed.”
He had not yet shaken hands, and as she spoke, Cicely’s arm dropped
quietly by her side. There was a slight inference of reproach in her
tone, and Mr. Guildford was not slow to perceive it.
“I don’t think you are changed,” he said; “I knew you
instantly. That was what startled me so, I was so utterly taken by
surprise.”
“Not more than I,” she replied. “I thought you were in India.”
“And I thought you were—” He hesitated.
“Yes,” she said, “I know where you thought I was; but I am not,
you see. That was all changed long ago. Have you heard nothing about
us since you left Sothernshire?” she went on. “Do you not know
that Greystone was sold—that we left it soon after my father’s
death? Do you not know about,” she glanced at her deep mourning
dress, “do you not know that I am quite an orphan now?”
“Yes,” he said in turn; “yes, I know that—I saw it in the
‘Times.’”
His tone was grave and sad. A feeling of self-reproach crept through
him as he recalled the half-bitter sympathy with which he had seen
the announcement of Mrs. Methvyn’s death.
“She has her husband to comfort her,” he had said to himself. For
once, in some fashionable record of “arrivals in town” he had
seen the names of “Mr. and Mrs. Fawcett from Barnstay Castle;”
and till this moment when he met Cicely Methvyn again, a doubt of her
marriage having taken place had never crossed his mind. There fell a
slightly awkward pause. In the presence of a third person, and that
person a stranger, Cicely could not speak to Mr. Guildford of her
mother’s illness and death as she would have liked to do, nor could
he say anything to lead her to do so. At last Bessie came to the
rescue. Amazed by the unexpected discovery of her brother’s
acquaintance with the pasteur’s niece, Mrs. Crichton had been
startled into keeping silence for much longer than was usual with
her. “It is just like a story,” she said to herself in an awe
struck whisper. Suddenly glancing at Mr. Guildford, a new idea struck
her, “Oh! Edmond,” she exclaimed, “you have taken off your
shade. Oh! how very wrong of you, and the light in this room is so
strong!”
She darted to the window and began drawing down the blinds.
Mr. Guildford looked annoyed. “It does not matter for a few
minutes, Bessie,” he said.
Cicely glanced at him. There was nothing in the appearance of his
eyes, dark and keen as ever, to suggest injured or enfeebled powers
of sight.
“My eyes are much stronger now,” he said to Cicely. “I strained
them when I was in India, but they are recovering now.”
“I heard that you were over-working yourself,” said Cicely.
“Yes, indeed,” exclaimed Mrs. Crichton. “It was not India, it
was nothing but overwork, and it will be the same thing again if you
don’t take care. He will never be able to use his eyes very
much,” she added, turning to Cicely.
A look of pain crossed Mr. Guildford’s face.
Cicely began to think it true that Mrs. Crichton was “very
stupid.”
“Not for a long time, I dare say,” she said quickly. “But I
have always heard that rest does wonders in such cases. And that
reminds me,” she went on, “will you show me exactly how you want
these papers done?”
Mr. Guildford had forgotten all about the papers. Now he looked up
with some embarrassment. “I could not,” he began, but Cicely
interrupted him.
“You thought of letting a stranger do it,” she said. “Why then
not me? I have very little occupation here; it would be a real
pleasure to me.”
She spoke simply but earnestly, and Mr. Guildford made no further
objection. He took up the papers and pointed out Bessie’s mistakes.
Then came a moment in which Mrs. Crichton left the room in search of
another manuscript. Cicely seized the opportunity.
“Mr. Guildford,” she said hastily, in a voice too low to catch
the long ears of the little pitcher in the corner, “I think I had
better tell you that my cousin Trevor Fawcett’s wife is Geneviève
Casalis—Geneviève Fawcett now, of course. It is with her parents I
am now staying here; they are very kind and good. Eudoxie,” with a
glance towards the child, “is Geneviève’s sister. I thought it
best you should know, as I dare say you will see Monsieur and Madame
Casalis sometimes.”
Mr. Guildford did not speak. One rapid glance of inquiry he could not
repress. Cicely stood it with perfect calmness.
“It happened a long time ago, very soon after my father’s
death,” she said quietly. “I—I believed it was for the best
then; since, I have come to feel sure of it.” Here her colour rose
a very little. “It was a comfort to me to be able to devote myself
entirely to my mother when her health failed,” she went on, as if
in explanation of her words; “there was no other tie to
interfere.”
Mr. Guildford bowed his head slightly, as if to signify that he
understood. “Thank you for telling me,” he said, as Bessie came
in again.
Cicely was very silent during the walk home, and answered at random
to Eudoxie’s chatter, agreeing with the child’s announcement that
she did not intend to call “him Monsieur Gentil.” “He is not
gentil at all,” she decided, the truth being that Mr. Guildford had
not taken any notice of her, for there was a spice of Geneviève in
Eudoxie now and then after all.
“How strange to have met again here!” Cicely was thinking to
herself. “It is as well, if it was to be, that it happened
unexpectedly. It will prevent his feeling constrained and ill at ease
with me on account of that fancy of his, if indeed he remembers it.”