So there they stood, those two antagonists, the woman with her eyes snapping and the outraged child with the tears streaming.
"Felicia," the Major's tone was terrifying, "you must apologize at once!"
Felicia was silent. She shook her head. The Major bowed to the French woman. "I apologize for her," he continued. "But I think Mademoiselle D'Ormy, you are right. She is growing into a woman and you are growing into a child—" And whatever else he said after Felice had fled to the garden doesn't matter. Yet two days later when Mademoiselle bade her farewell the two enemies flung themselves on each others' necks and wept. Much to the disgust of the Major, who fairly shoved Mademoiselle away and who appeared not to see the sobbing and impetuous young person who dashed headlong to the nursery.
But after that life was much more serene, much sweeter. To be sure she could no longer ransack the storeroom. She never had to explain to the Major what had occasioned that last tempestuous quarrel but she roamed at will through the whole dusty house and possessed herself gloriously of all its treasures.
You should have seen her in those days, tricking herself out in what finery she could muster from the walnut bureau. For after Mademoiselle's departure the afternoon chess prolonged itself into twilight and Felicia proudly dined with the Major instead of in the nursery.
She knew how one should look for dinner because there was Maman's portrait over the drawing-room fireplace, in the frock she'd worn when she had dined "with her family in France—" Mademoiselle had dressed Octavia for that wonderful party and she had never tired of telling Felicia how beautiful the eighteen-year Octavia had been.
"It is a woman's duty to think of her charms," Mademoiselle had said, "that is what the husband of Julie, Madame Recamier, said, it is what Madame Louise taught Miss Octavia—"
And so Felicia naively parted her hair and brushed it satin-smooth and coiled it neatly on the nape of her white neck with the same big carved coral Spanish comb tucked into the shining mass that Octavia had worn when she sat for the portrait. Sometimes she wore the lovely black lace shawl, sometimes the creamy white embroidered silk one, and always the delicate coral and silver jewelry. Yet she couldn't possibly have known from the pale image that stared back at her from the dim shimmer of the drawing-room mirrors, how exquisitely lovely she was, not even when the Major bent over her hand and said, as he had said so often to her mother,
"You are very charming today, my dear!"
He did not know himself, the grim old stoic, how much he adored her.