Calm before storm! In after days, Honor often looked back to that week that followed her first interview with Mrs. Damian. It was a peaceful week, memorable—it seemed then—only by the return of Patricia from Coventry; a softened, chastened Patricia, who had found, she declared, the remedy for most of the ills of life.
“Silence and solitude! Nothing like them, my dear. I shall be a Trappist nun as soon as I am old enough!”
Madame Madeleine and Soeur Séraphine went to return Mrs. Damian’s call; went again, by special invitation, to tea; came back looking very grave. After the second visit they showed—it was recalled later—peculiar tenderness toward Honor. Always kindness itself, it seemed as if they could not now do enough for her. A pat on her shoulder, a reconstructive touch on her hair-ribbon, an anxious eye on her appetite. Honor was deeply touched, but was also conscience-stricken. They did not dream, these dear ladies! Ought she to tell them, that her heart was no longer in the school? That all day long she was thinking of her mountains, and of her mountain friends? Was she false-hearted, ungrateful, wicked?
Then, one day, the bombshell exploded. Mrs. Damian had come, it appeared, with authority from Honor’s guardian, the mysterious Mr. Stanford, to take her away, if she judged it wise, to take her to America, to—virtually—to adopt her. Not only did Mrs. Damian think it wise, but Madame Madeleine and Soeur Séraphine agreed with her. With tears in her eyes, the little Sister tried to explain.
“Eet ees for zy well-to-be, my all-cherished one! Zy own contree—zy own pe-ople to zee—zou understandest?”
But Honor did not, could not understand. She could only cling round the Sister’s neck, weeping bitterly, begging, with choking sobs, not to be sent away.
“It isn’t my own country!” she sobbed. “They aren’t my own people; I don’t know anything about them, and I don’t want to. My country is here, where I have always lived. I shall die if you send me away! And I won’t—I won’t be a burden!” cried the child. “I’ll work, my Sister! I can make b-b-butter and cheese; I can knit and spin and sew. Don’t—don’t send me away! And when I grow up, I want—I want to be a sennerin, my Sister; and then I can make—all kinds of things—”
It was a bitter hour. The little Sister’s tender heart was torn, as she strove to quiet the distracted child. Finally, no way remained but the quiet, direct command which was never questioned.
“Go to thy room, my child! There pray for strength and guidance, and remain till thou hast composed thyself!”
Meantime the class-room simmered like a covered pipkin. It was History Hour, and M. Arnoult was on the estrade, blue-eyed and benign. He noticed Honor’s absence, and was distressed at hearing that she was indisposed. For the rest, he noticed little, the dear gentleman. Notes circulated under his very nose, that patrician feature of which he was gently proud; notes conveying varied information. Mrs. Damian was Honor’s grandmother in disguise; her great-aunt; a friend only of her family; a stranger who saw and loved her from afar. (This was Stephanie’s version, naturally.) She was Américaine, enormously rich, very aristocratic, all that there was of most chic. She would adopt La Moriole; would make her her heir; would cause her to be enveloped in bank-notes as it were a cloak.