“Has she been in your charge long?”
“Ever since she left school, six months ago,” said Mrs. Ellis with a sigh. “Her mother, one of the kindest and most charming women I have ever met, with all the high-bred ease that nothing will give to Nouna, wished her to have finishing lessons in music and dancing and languages in London. Music!” ejaculated the poor lady in a contemptuous manner. “Nothing would ever induce her to learn the piano, as every well-educated English girl should do. At school, after her first lesson, she crept down stairs at night, and undid all the strings of the instrument; so that had to be given up. I believe she wanted to learn the tom-tom, or some hideous Indian thing with jam-pot covers at each end, and they had to compromise by teaching her the harp and the guitar. Then languages! They only managed to get her to study French by telling her it was one of the dialects of India. As to dancing, that came to her like magic, from a waltz to a kind of wild dance of her own, more like the leaps and bounds of a young animal than the decorous movements of a young lady! I dare not think what the Countess would say if she could see her.”
“Why doesn’t she live with her mother, then, who would surely have more influence over her than any one?”
“You must not blame the Countess,” said Mrs. Ellis, as if he had been guilty of blasphemy. “A more loving mother never lived. You should read the beautiful letters she writes to her daughter. But she has married again; and her husband, the Conde di Valdestillas, a Spanish nobleman much older than herself, is a great invalid, and she is obliged to travel about with him wherever he fancies to go.”
“But surely the daughter ought to be considered as well as the husband.”
“The Countess feels that; and next year, when her daughter’s education will be finished, she intends settling down either in London or in Paris, and introducing the young lady to the world. If I can only keep the girl out of serious mischief so long,” sighed the lady, who seemed delighted to have a confidant; “but really it is too trying. The first thing we do after we have left the school (I was a boarder there, and as Nouna had taken a fancy to me, the Countess requested me to undertake the duties of chaperon) and come to London to look for apartments, is to pass this house on the way from Paddington to the Countess’s lawyers, from whom I draw my salary and Nouna’s allowance. There is a card—‘Apartments, furnished’—in one of the first-floor windows. Nouna catches sight of the Oriental names on the board outside, sees Indian lamps in the windows down stairs, and nothing will satisfy her but to come back to this house and settle here. Then, of course, the younger gentleman, Mr. Rahas, falls in love with her and——”
At this point Mrs. Ellis was interrupted by the flinging open of the door, and Nouna re-appeared, her face distorted with anger, and her eyes flashing with contempt: like an enraged empress she held open the door, keeping her head at a very haughty angle, and disdaining to look at the visitor.
“I know that nothing I can show my guest can have any interest for him,” she said icily; “but yet I think it would have been more courteous to me to disguise that fact.”
She made one step towards her American chair, when Lauriston, with an amused glance at Mrs. Ellis which he might well suppose to be unseen, hastened to the door, and held it open for her with a bow.
“I beg your pardon,” said he humbly, “I am very much interested in whatever you like to show me. But you left the room so suddenly that, before a clumsy man could hope to get up to you, you disappeared like a wave of the sea.”