“The day after to-morrow, then?”
“With all my heart, if—I don’t know what Mademoiselle will say.”
“Mademoiselle seemed to think the same of you.”
“Of me? Oh, I’ve no voice in the matter! Mademoiselle has unlimited sway in the school-room. Mademoiselle is a most excellent creature. I have unbounded confidence in her. She is quite superior to her position—came to me from the Comtesse de St. Velay—has written an admirable essay on education—her brother is professor of foreign literature at Tarbes.”
“Perhaps Mademoiselle uses your name as a kind of authority.”
“Very likely,” laughing sweetly; “Mamma’s name is probably made free use of, in the school-room and nursery. I remember when, ‘I’ll tell your Mamma!’ was a terror to myself. Oh, we all go through these things in our turn. Poor, dear Arbell! there is excellent promise in her; but at present she is under a cloud. She lives in a world of her own, is proud and stubborn, and Mademoiselle says her spirit must be broken. It may be so, but I don’t wish to stand by and witness the operation.”
“I am sorry to hear you say that,” cried I, anxiously, “for I think the operation so extremely hazardous, that it ought only to take place under the mother’s eye.”
“It would affect me more,” answered she, very seriously, “than a surgical case.”
“I can quite believe it,” replied I, with equal seriousness; “but possibly your sagacity and maternal affection united would enable you to discern that no such painful course was needed. If Arbell were a little more under your eye—”