“Mademoiselle will help you to purchase these,” she said, “and you can have all your school frocks nicely washed and done up in the school laundry. I am afraid I cannot spend more on your dress, Penelope, but I think you can manage with the money I send you.”
Mademoiselle’s cheeks were flushed when she devoured the contents of her own letter; for enclosed in it was a cheque so generous that her eyes blazed with pleasure.
“Madame is of the most mean, and yet of the most generous!” she cried. “She allows me to go when you go, petite, and she gives me a little sum to spend on myself, so that I make a holiday the best that I can. I knew where I will reside. I will go to that place near Castle Beverley—I forget its long name—but it is gay, sad on the sea.”
“You’re not going to Marshlands?” cried Penelope, in some alarm.
“That is the place that I will go to,” said Mademoiselle. “I have looked it out on the map, and it is far off, but not too far off. There I can watch over you, although it is the distant view that I will obtain, and I can, from time to time, see my other most beloved pupil, and perhaps go to Castle Beverley, and wish them adieu before I depart to that land of sun—la belle France.”
Penelope did not at all like the idea of Mademoiselle’s going to Marshlands. She hoped she would not come across Brenda, and she trusted sincerely that she would not be invited to Castle Beverley. But, as Mademoiselle was determined to have her own way, Penelope resolved to take the good which lay at hand, and not to trouble herself too much about the future.
Mademoiselle was now extremely good-natured, and helped Penelope to renovate her very simple wardrobe and, in short, made herself as charming as a Frenchwoman of her character knew how. All in good time, Honora’s delightful letter of invitation arrived, and Mademoiselle resolved to travel with her pupil as far as Marshlands.
“I part from you,” she said, “at the railway station where you will meet your friends so distinguished; and I, the governess, the foreigner, will go to search for appartements that are cheap. You will bid me farewell, and permit me to shake the hand once again of my pupil Honora. Ah! but I am kind to you—am I not?”
“Yes,” murmured Penelope, feeling all the time that Mademoiselle was unbearably trying. The joys, however, of going to Castle Beverley should not be damped even by this incident.
The girl and the Frenchwoman travelled second-class together, and arrived at the somewhat noisy station of Marshlands-on-the-Sea between six and seven o’clock on a glorious evening in August Penelope had not beheld the blue, blue sea since she was quite a little girl, and her eyes sparkled now with delight. She looked quite different from the limp and somewhat uninteresting girl she had appeared to every one at Hazlitt Chase. The anticipation of happiness was working marvels in her character. Penelope had taken good care not to inform Brenda of the day of her arrival. She was quite sure she would have to meet her sister; but she would at least give herself a little rest before the encounter took place. She rejoiced, too, in the knowledge that up to the present Mademoiselle d’Etienne and Brenda did not know each other.