After this my second daughter appeared—a pretty young hoyden, with lovable clinging ways; and then the superioress asked if I would like to see the garden. Of course I said yes; and we were taken through the long corridors, out into a fine old garden, where the pupils, who looked like the Hyde Lodge girls translated into French, were prancing and scampering about in the usual style. After the garden we went to the chapel, where there were more pictures, and flower-bedecked altars, and pale twinkling tapers burning here and there in the chill sunlight. Here there were damsels engaged in pious meditation, from five years old upwards. They send even the little ones to meditate, Clarice tells me; and there are these infants kneeling before the flower-bedecked altars, rapt in religious contemplation, like so many Thomas à Kempises. The young meditators glanced shyly at us as we passed. When they had shown me everything of special interest in the pleasant old place, Clarice and Madelon ran off to dress for walking, in order to accompany us to Côtenoir, where we were to dine.
It was quite a family party. Mademoiselle Lenoble was there, and papa. He arrived at the château while Gustave and I were paying our visit to the convent. He is in the highest spirits, and treats me with an amount of affection and courtesy I have not been accustomed to receive at his hands. Of course I know the cause of this change; the future mistress of Côtenoir is a very different person from that wretched girl who was nothing to him but a burden and an encumbrance. But even while I despise him I cannot refuse to pity him. One forgives anything in old age. In this, at least, it is a second childhood; and my father is very old, Lotta. I saw the look of age in his face more plainly at Côtenoir, where he assumed his usual debonnaire man-of-the-world tone and manner, than I had seen it in London, when he was a professed invalid. He is much changed since I was with him at Forêtdechêne. It seems as if he had kept Time at bay very long, and now at last, the common enemy will be held at arm's-length no longer. He still braces himself up in the old military manner, still holds himself more erect than many men of half his age; but, in spite of all this, I can see that he is very feeble; shaken and worn by a long life of difficulty. I am glad to think that there will be a haven for him at last; and if I did not thank Gustave with my whole heart for giving me a home and a place in the world, I should thank him for giving a shelter to my father.
And now, dear, as I hope to be with you so very soon, I shall say no more. I am to spend a day in Rouen before we come back—papa and I, that is to say; Gustave stays in Normandy to make some arrangements before he comes back to England. I cannot comprehend the business relations between him and papa; but there is some business going on—law business, as it seems to me—about which papa is very important and elated.
I am to see the cathedral and churches at Rouen, and I shall contrive to see the shops, and to bring you something pretty. Papa has given me money—the first he ever gave me unasked. I have very little doubt it comes from Gustave; but I have no sense of shame in accepting it. M. Lenoble's seems to me a royal nature, formed to bestow benefits and bounties on every side.
Tell Mrs. Sheldon that I shall bring her the prettiest cap I can find in
Rouen; and,
with all love, believe me ever your affectionate DIANA.