“Ah! do you remember that?” cried Mysie. “I have so often tried to recollect what it really was when she looked again. Captain Grantley made it, you know, when we were trying to comfort Betty.”
“I remember you and Lady Phyllis said you would go and confess to Mrs. Bernard and take all the blame, and Lord Rotherwood said he would escort you!”
“Yes, and Betty said it was no good, for if her mother forgave her ten times over, still that spiteful French maid would put her to bed and say she had no robe convenable,” went on Mysie. “But then you took her to your own room, and washed her and mended her, so that she came out all right at luncheon, and nobody knew anything, but she thought that horrid woman guessed and tweaked her hair all the harder for it.”
“Poor child, she looked as if she were under a tyranny.”
“Have you seen her since?”
“No; but Phyllis tells me she has burst forth into liberty, bicycles, and wild doings that would drive her parents to distraction if she dreamt of them.”
“How is Lady Phyllis? Did I not hear that the family had gone abroad for her health?”
“Oh yes, and I went with them. They all had influenza, and were frightened, but it ended in our meeting with Franceska Vanderkist, the very most charming looking being I ever did see; and Ivinghoe had fallen in love with her when she was Miranda, and he married her like a real old hero. Do you remember Ivinghoe?”
“No; I suppose he was one of an indistinguishable troop of schoolboys.”
“I remember Lord Rotherwood’s good nature and fun when he met the bedraggled party,” said Magdalen, smiling.