“Do you actually leave this evening?” I asked her.
Mama had been even more impetuous than I had anticipated.
“Yes. I need never see any of them again.”
“It has been an experience, at least,” I reminded her.
“Yes—but——” she shrugged her shoulders.
“Expensively bought?” I suggested. And, since she was leaving, I thought that I might add: “At least, my dear, you have kept your colours flying. These last days have been very trying, I am afraid, but you come out of them better than our friends of the Fourth Form, to my thinking.”
“Thank you,” said Laura. She looked at me with her grave, straightforward eyes.
“It would have been much easier, though, if only I really hadn’t cheated.”
There is a postscript to the story of the hotel child. A very few years later I heard of her marriage to the Prince d’Armaillh’ac-Ambry, the representative of the noblest, and one of the wealthiest, of French families. I believe that they live almost entirely on his estates in Brittany, and that the Princess interests herself personally in the numerous peasantry around them.