And besides, had not Father Anselm and Mère Pauline both said that she was to leave the future in God’s hands, and not to look ahead at all, just yet?
Frances thought that it was nice to be told just what one ought to do, and to feel such perfect confidence that the advice given came, even though through human agency, from a Divine source. It simplified everything very much. Later on, perhaps, that simplification might be terribly needed.
She resolutely put the thought from her.
“Wake up, Francie,” said Mrs. Tregaskis’ voice, tense with excitement; “we’re just in. Of course, she won’t have been able to meet us herself, I don’t suppose—just at lunch-time——”
But she scanned the platform eagerly, all the same, even as she spoke.
The next moment there was a double exclamation of joy, as Hazel’s charming, laughing face appeared at the window and her hands tugged at the stiff handle of the door.
XVIII
HAZEL had not changed.
That much was evident in the first instant, and even after Frances had seen her, laughing and triumphant, playing with her baby son or, securely radiant, seated at the head of her husband’s table, she still felt Lady Marleswood to be very much one with the little Hazel Tregaskis of Porthlew days.
Her relations with Bertha, even, were singularly unaltered. Frances knew that her guardian’s imperious rule had weighed far more lightly on Hazel, in their nursery days, than on either of her wards. She had opposed to it a certain joyous pagan insensitiveness, for the most part too indifferently good-humoured to resist, but quite capable of overruling, lightly, merrily, yet more or less decisively, her mother’s most trenchant bidding by her own calm quality of self-reliance.