"I'll be there by noon. Goodnight."
"Goodnight."
CHAPTER III
Heloise's intentional noisiness in rearranging the toilet articles on the dressing table aroused Louise. The brilliant sunlight of a sparkling winter morning was pouring into the room. Half-awake and the brightness of the room filtering through her still-closed eyelids, she was obsessed for an instant with the fear that, over-sleeping, she was late for the exercises attending the beginning of a day at Miss Mayhew's school. She smiled at the thought, in spite of a brooding, indefinable trouble that had burdened her sleep, when, with wide eyes, she quickly sensed the lavishness of the room and saw the invincibly trig Heloise moving about.
"Mademoiselle is awake at last?" said Heloise in French, a trace of irritation in her tone. "One considered that Mademoiselle contemplated sleeping until the end of time."
Louise disarmed her with a laugh.
"Perhaps I should have," she said, lightly, but on her guard with her French in the presence of so meticulous a critic, "had I not just this moment dreamt of coffee. Am I too late for breakfast?"
Of course Mademoiselle should have her coffee instantly, said the appeased Heloise, ringing. The maid mentally pronounced that Louise's finishing-school French was almost intelligible to one understanding that language.
Mrs. Treharne had sent Heloise to look after Louise until a maid should be obtained for her. Louise, sitting up in bed, her fresh, clear-colored face aureoled by her agreeably awry mass of bronzed hair, the nocturnal braids of which she already had begun to unplait, laughed again at the thought of being attended by a maid.