"I have changed my mind," she announced, abruptly, taking her seat upon Jeanne-Armande's hard sofa. "You are to come with me. This is the blue room, I suppose; and there are the four cats. Where is the bodiced woman? Send her to me; and go pack your clothes immediately."
"Am I to go to Caryl's—where Helen is?" said Anne, in excited surprise.
"Yes; you will see your Helen. You understand, I presume, that she is at the bottom of all this."
"But—do you like Helen, grandaunt?"
"I am extremely fond of her," replied Miss Vanhorn, dryly. "Run and make ready; and send the bodiced woman to me. I give you half an hour; no longer."
Jeanne-Armande came in with her gliding step. In her youth a lady's footfall was never heard. She wore long narrow cloth gaiters without heels, met at the ankles by two modest ruffles, whose edges were visible when the wind blew. The exposure of even a hair's-breadth rim of ankle would have seemed to her an unpardonable impropriety. However, there was no danger; the ruffles swept the ground.
The Frenchwoman was grieved to part with her pupil; she had conceived a real affection for her in the busy spot which served her as a heart. She said good-by in the privacy of the kitchen, that Miss Vanhorn might not see the tears in her eyes; then she returned to the blue room and went through a second farewell, with a dignity appropriate to the occasion.
"Good-by," said Anne, coming back from the doorway to kiss her thin cheek a second time. Then she whispered: "I may return to you after all, mademoiselle. Do not forget me."
"The dear child!" said Jeanne-Armande, waving her handkerchief as the carriage drove away. And there was a lump in her yellow old throat which did not disappear all day.