“True, my dear, true, and I hope you made her feel that she is a Jozain.”
“I didn’t wish to be unkind to her, mama. Perhaps she is not so wrong after all. Sometimes I think it would have been better to have let our friends know our real circumstances. Then they would have helped me to get pupils, and I could have earned more teaching music than I can making pen-wipers, and I am sure it would be more respectable and more agreeable.”
“Oh, Diane, you surprise me,” cried Madame d’Hautreve, tremulously. “Think of it! a granddaughter of the Counts d’Hautreve and d’Orgenois teaching the children of grocers and bakers to play the piano. No, no; I would rather bury myself here and die in poverty than disgrace our name in that way.”
Mam’selle Diane made no reply, and after a few moments madame turned on her pillow to finish her morning nap. Then the last of the d’Hautreves went into the little garden, and drawing on a pair of old gloves she dug and trimmed and trained her flowers for some time, and afterwards gathered up the small piles of seeds from the white papers.
“Oh, oh!” she said wearily, seeing how few they were, “even the flowers refuse to seed this year.”
After she had finished her work in the garden, she went dejectedly back to the little room where her mother still slept, and opening a drawer in her armoire she took out a small box. She sighed heavily as she raised the lid. Inside on a blue velvet lining lay a slender bracelet set with turquoises and diamonds. “It must go,” she said sadly to herself. “I have kept it till the last. I hoped I wouldn’t be obliged to part with it, but I must. I can’t let poor mama know how needy we are. It’s the only thing I can spare without telling her. Yes, I must give it up. I must ask Madame Jourdain to dispose of it for me.” Then she sat for a long time looking at it silently, while the hot tears fell on the blue velvet. At last, with a sigh, she bravely wiped her eyes, and laid the little box under the ducklings in the black basket.
For more than a week Mam’selle Diane did not see Lady Jane, and the poor woman’s eyes had a suspicious look of tears, as she went about her duties, silent and dejected. Her only pleasure was no longer a pleasure; she could not go near the piano for some days. At last, one evening, she sat down and began to play and sing a little song she had taught the child, when suddenly she heard, outside the window, the sweet treble voice she loved so well.
“It’s Lady Jane!” she cried, and springing up so hastily that she upset the piano-stool she grappled with the rusty bolts of the shutters, and, for the first time in years, threw them boldly open, and there stood the child, hugging her bird to her breast, her wan little face lit up with her sparkling eyes and bright, winsome smile.
Mam’selle Diane went down on her knees, and Lady Jane clung to her neck and kissed her rapturously over and over.
“Diane, Diane, what are you thinking of, to open that shutter in the face of every one?” said the old lady feebly.