“A week later I got a most affectionate letter from my father, saying that he would visit his ‘dear little daughter’ as soon as he thought it would be safe to leave his wife, who had lain in a low condition ever since the arrival of her babe.
“But my father did not come.
“It was, in fact, October before the countess was able to leave her room. Then her physicians ordered her to the south of France, whither my father soon took her, with her infant son.
“Another dreary winter followed me at Weirdwaste. The same confinement to the house, without companions, or amusements, or occupations—except my elderly attendants and my schoolbooks and music. No visitors except the vicar and the doctor. No visits except to church on exceptional Sundays when the roads were passable. I grew into a very strange child, precocious in a certain sort of intelligence gained from books, but backward in all knowledge of child life and depressed in spirits.
“I received occasional letters from my father, and wrote others, touched up by my governess.”
CHAPTER XXV
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
“It was not until the next June, when we had been parted nearly two years, that I saw my father again.
“He came over suddenly and dropped down on us, so to speak, on the morning of the fifth of that month.
“Steward and housekeeper were both ‘taken aback’ and ‘flustered,’ as they described themselves; yet they were not unprepared. The house was always as well kept as the circumstances would permit.
“Nor was Miss Murray. She also had done her duty and could present her pupil without fear of criticism.