Amid all the conflicting elements of her new surroundings, Lydia Longloy contrived dexterously to steer her way. In her old home she had been taught to regard the French as “bloodthirsty heathen,” but with easy adaptability and admirable tact she now showed herself quite as ready to adopt the faith and opinions of these new friends as she was to follow their fashions and manners. A beguiling innocence was her chief characteristic, accompanied as it was by a soft amiability and teachableness both touching and flattering.
Père de Mereil, of the Seminary, who spoke the English language and devoted himself especially to the conversion of heretics, declared enthusiastically that this young girl was the most interesting convert he had ever been privileged to instruct. If the English captive were occasionally betrayed into frivolity by the levity of youth, the worthy priest ascribed these lapses entirely to the worldly influence of Mademoiselle de Monesthrol. Lydia had an easy way of explaining herself to be always in the right, and it would be unjust to attribute the pretty creature’s innocent vanity and frank simplicity to other than natural childish frailty.
Heedlessly generous with the divine faith of youth, Diane de Monesthrol gave her love to the stranger. During the long illness which followed Lydia’s removal to Ville Marie, Diane nursed her with tender care, and in her helplessness she had twined herself around the closest fibres of Diane’s heart. She might not be either very strong or very wise, but she was her own pet, the joint protégé of herself and du Chesne. Lydia’s trials and sufferings invested her with a halo of romantic interest. Diane’s own glowing imagination conferred upon the Puritan maiden qualities of which the stranger had formed no conception. Her pure and simple beauty would have shone alike at a cottage door and in the halls of princes.
Lydia rejoiced in the sweet and exhilarating consciousness of an approving Providence. She found herself placed exactly to her taste. Dreading pain, she was only too well pleased to be allowed to forget the past; finding herself flattered and caressed, she desired nothing better than to enjoy the present. An orphan, thrown upon the charity of distant and reluctant relatives, her life had not been happy. She had no enthusiasm, no imagination, no warm human sympathy to render the severe existence of her childhood endurable. Without in the least realizing it, Lydia had been bored to extinction. She hated now to think of those long, unlovely years of repression of her natural faculties. She had been accustomed to be looked down upon by her thrifty England kindred, who had felt no hesitation in sharply chiding her shortcomings. There her beauty had been of small account; she had no chance of wearing beautiful clothes, and had never listened to the sweet accents of flattery. Her various misdeeds had been severely visited upon her, her frailties exposed to open scorn, with the cheerful prospect held over her that in another existence these trifling vanities should be still more actively rued in fire and brimstone.
Thinking of all this Lydia Longloy rejoiced in her new freedom with the whole strength of her trivial soul. The Puritan settlement of Grotton, near Boston, with its memories of friends and neighbors, its precise restraint and rigid formality, became merely an unpleasant remembrance to be crushed out of sight. All the strict discipline of her New England training fell from her like a cast-off garment. She learned French with rapidity, absorbing the ideas and sentiments of those among whom her lot was cast. She adopted powder and patches, fans and feathers, as though to the manner born. She acquired a deliciously arch imitation of the Marquise’s airs; and if she missed Diane’s dainty grace, her coquetry had a touch of sweet naturalness as of a child’s affectation and extravagance. Once she found that to be pious was considered essential, thereafter her piety satisfied even Anne Barroy.
In the large, hospitable household one more or less made very little difference. Le Ber smiled indulgently upon what he considered his ward’s new caprice, but for him the English prisoner had no charms. There were two whose favor she never succeeded in winning: these were Madame de Monesthrol and Nanon, who quickly arrived at a very distinct perception of the situation.
“Plebeian to the core,” Madame nodded her stately head sagaciously, smelling at her flacon as if to keep off infection. “The little one waters a barren field. All that will count for nothing. This English girl will keep all she can get, and she is clever at getting. Yet one is young but once—can one blame her faith?”
Nanon was still more outspoken in her opinion.
“Bah! that crocodile blonde demoiselle. There are two words to a bargain, and our demoiselle will always be a loser, for she is of those who give lavishly with both hands; this other is a sponge who absorbs all and yields nothing in return.”