Justin had been gone ages.... She supposed he would be out all the morning now.... He had left the room in a most dreadfully untidy state.... Oh, well!
She set to work.
It was in a very damp heap, on a very tidy floor, that half an hour later a tactless maid discovered her. But Laura, scrambling to her feet, forestalled all comment.
“I happen,” said Laura, with great dignity, “to have a little bit of a cold. It’s lunch-time, isn’t it? Good-bye, Mary. I’m going home now.”
And home she went.
Her guardian angel was very much pleased with her. But the devil, who happened to be passing, though he offered his congratulations, opined that it would be worth his while to come back that way in a year or two.
CHAPTER X
She was sixteen when she discovered (inaccurately) that England is an island, that beyond its waters again there is what, superficially if deceptively, you call land, and what you call people, busy, vivid, quick-tongued, real to themselves, yet to you unconvincing, phantasmagoric, like the land and people of a play.
She was not consciously insular. On the contrary, from her railway carriage and her pension, her sight-seeing, her studio and her walks abroad, she looked out upon the new order of existence with fascinated and enthusiastic interest. And France responded, on occasion, with empressement. The glance of your average Frenchman, not necessarily discourteous, is nevertheless always and embarrassingly instructive. She had begun to realize that she was English: she was now made aware that she was good-looking. She was to take no credit; but this was her birthright and her blessing. Wonderful facts! She had her moments of pharisaic thankfulness to Providence for thus equipping her, as she plunged with zest into the new life. Like a doubtful swimmer she put a foot down, now and then, just to feel the safe English ground still under her, but secretly, shamefast: on the surface she became, with the dear, ridiculous adaptability of the teens, very French indeed—French enough, in speech and air and manner, let alone clothing, to appal Justin—but that comes later. She discovered France. She had her youthful right, I think, to a spoil or two.