Felicia was exploring them thoroughly one rainy afternoon while Mademoiselle dozed by the nursery fireside. She found a beautiful box with an inlaid cover that was filled with all sorts of fascinating trinkets; earrings and breastpins and droll bracelets of tarnished silver set with jade and coral—queer little letters folded in triangles with gay red wax seals, addressed in French, most of them—a soft black lace shawl—Felicia was trailing about grandly when Mademoiselle awoke to rage and scold.
The child was beginning to long for freedom, she was constantly questioning. Octavia's gentle raillery, Octavia's delicious half answers to the "Whys and wheres and whens and whats" had satisfied, but Mademoiselle's abrupt, "I can't tell you—" "It does not concern you—" "Zat is not of consequence—" were teaching the child to scheme. She was perpetually trying to find out for herself the things that Mademoiselle declined to tell her. She was especially curious about Maman's closed door. Mademoiselle refused to open it.
But there came a day, when Mademoiselle wasn't looking, when Felice tapped gently at her mother's door and opened it and went in. And when she saw the empty bed and the empty chair she ran in great glee to her grandfather.
"Oh, Oh," she cried, "Why didn't you tell me that Maman had gone to the House in the Woods? Why didn't you let me go with her? For she said we would make the garden together!"
He did not answer her at once.
"How did you know?"
"Because Babiche is gone," she answered triumphantly. "And Babiche wouldn't be gone from the house unless Maman were gone—so they've gone to the House in the Woods—to attend to the garden—with—" she frowned until she remembered "with Piqueur—unless he is too old to help—and now I will go—"
It was curious how his voice faltered, he looked tireder and more unhappy than in the days when Octavia had made a game of making him happy.
"Felicia," he groped for words as he faced the questioning-eyed child,
"I—we—you—cannot go to the House in the Woods just now—I have
Certain Legal Matters that must be attended to—but we—we will go
some day—"
She accepted this with all the earnestness of her eleven years. But at the door she paused, shyly. He looked very "cross and worried."