Poor Rose Marie was bitterly disappointed. It had all been so very, very different—this first meeting—to what she had anticipated. She felt very angry with herself indeed for being so childish and so timid—no doubt by now my lord had set her down as a silly goose quite unfit to be a great English lady. At this thought she felt tears of shame welling to her eyes, and was infinitely relieved when maman took hold of her hand and led her out of the room.
She bowed to my lord, and then held her head very erect as she walked past him to the door; she wanted to look proud and defiant now, for she had felt those strange deep-set eyes of his fixed upon her with an expression she could not define.
And when she was alone in her room, she went straight to the image of the Virgin Mary which hung against the wall close to her narrow bed. She knelt on the prie-dieu beneath it, and she begged the Holy Mother of God to teach her not to be rebellious, and to be ready to obey her lord in all things, to give him love and respect, "And O holy Mary, Mother of God!" she added with a pitiful little sigh, "if it be in your power to make my lord love me, then I humbly pray you tell him so to do; and whisper to me from on high what I must do to please him and to find favour in his sight."
CHAPTER XIX
Smiling, frowning, evermore
Thou art perfect in love-lore.
—Tennyson.
"My cabbage," said Maman Legros in that decisive tone, which she only assumed on great occasions, and which then no one dreamed of contradicting, "what thou dost ask is entirely out of the question. It is not seemly for a maiden to be left alone in company with her lord. Why! every one down the street would know of it—thy father's 'prentices would make mock of thee—and thy reputation would be as surely gone as is thistle-down after a gale."