"You will teach Mattie what she wants to learn, and what she can learn," said Mark; "but Doris can learn anything, and I want you to teach her all you know."
So Doris was taken daily to her tutor, as she had been to the school of the Misses Hopwell, and the old French courtier bowed down and worshiped her, as in all her life did all the men who were brought into contact with her. To teach her was a labor of love. Her aptitude was marvelous. She learned to speak French and German fluently; she drew and painted with taste and skill; her little fingers, with some inherited grace, flew over the ivory keys, or touched the shining cords of harp and guitar. Manners—the manners of courts—the banished Frenchman taught her, and she learned them intuitively.
"Mon Dieu!" cried the old gentleman; "but this child is lovely! She surpasses Ninon D'Enclos and Diana de Poitiers! She has spirit, wit, originality—everything that is admirable! A queen might be proud to be her mother!"
Doris swayed and enchanted her old preceptor. Mattie, quietly studying French, drawing, and English literature, was left far behind by her foster-sister, who was speedily learning all that the tutor could teach.
"You should have been born a princess, ma belle!" the old man would say, delighted with some flash of wit, some piquant performance. "What will you do with all your beauty here on a farm?"
"Am I very beautiful?" demanded Doris.
"More beautiful than Helen, for whom thousands died; than Cleopatra, who had the world's conquerors at her feet! What will you do with so much beauty?"
"Make the most of it!" and the words jarred on the aristocrat.
All men said the same. Even the rector unwisely cried:
"Little maid, you have beauty enough to turn your head. Do not let it make you proud."