Felice smiled.
"I know. She used to tell me," she confided. "She told me that Poquelin, the father of Moliere, made it." She was wan with fatigue, poor child, even after she lay, warm and cozy, in the great bed that had been her mother's. And the last thing she saw as she closed her eyes in the wavering candle light was Margot's fat and comfortable figure, trudging toward the fireplace to spread out her coat to dry—
It had been a fearful week for Margot, this week since the Major's curt message to make the house ready had come. For all that she was forty-five and sturdy and skilful at the myriad tasks that her uncle Piqueur's rheumatism and age had gradually let fall upon her shoulders during the slow passing years, this had been a job that put her on her mettle. Eighteen years of dust and disorder had Margot somehow or other weeded out of that building. But even with the pale spring sunshine and wind to help her and even with the huge fires they had kept kindled all day in the broad fireplaces, the corridors were still damp and cold and musty. And she was weak with fatigue and excitement. She sat down beside the fireplace, her tired body relaxing as she stared through the gloom at the figure in the canopied bed.
"She is not so beautiful as Octavia—" she thought, "but she is very sweet—and her eyes—they have that same longing to be happy—" she sighed as she tiptoed clumsily out of the room and down the draughty stairway. She stood respectfully beside the Major's chair. "Monsieur," she said gravely, "does Miss Felicia know anything at all about all of us?"
He looked up at her quickly, his dark eyes sparkling with anger at her audacity, but something in her sober, respectful gaze quieted him.
"I do not desire that she shall—" he answered. "It is better not to have her—but—" his voice faltered. "I regret that she does not understand that her mother—that Miss Octavia—" his thin old hand tightened its grip on the frail arm of the chair, "I do not know," he ended miserably, "just how it came about that she is expecting to find Miss Octavia here—in the garden. Perhaps you can tell her something to comfort her—perhaps—"
Gray-haired, wrinkled, her skin brown from exposure, Margot leaned forward, her eyes shining with excitement.
"Sometimes I think," she said distinctly, "that Miss Octavia is in the garden, Monsieur—" She laughed softly at his start. "Do not think I am out of my wits—" She tapped her head significantly. "I do not mean like a ghost—I do not see her. Only there is something, most of all in the springtime—that makes me happy. Perhaps Octavia's daughter will feel it. Perhaps that thing, whatever it is, will make it easier for me—" she wiped her eyes, "to answer all things she will ask me—"
Upstairs in the four-poster bed that Poquelin had carved, Felicia slept, she smiled as she stirred in her slumbers. She was very tired. "Maman," she muttered drowsily as the Major paused outside her door on his way to his room, "In the garden—" and the Major listened and sighed.
She awoke to the diddling drone of Piqueur's quavering voice. In the clear sweetness of the May morning above the twittering of the birds it raised itself, the quaint measures delighting her ears. Even in Piqueur's thin falsetto the old melody sang itself—tender, graceful, spirited, never lagging—he was dropping pea seeds into the trench that Margot had prepared in the kitchen dooryard, he was always content when he was planting.