And, having accomplished this characteristic, if somewhat; sketchy provision for his daughter’s welfare, Peterson had gone cheerfully on his way, convinced that he had done all that was paternally encumbent on him.
Madame de Varigny was voluble in her regrets at the prospect of losing her “chère Mademoiselle Peterson,” yet in spite of her protestations of dismay Jean was conscious of an impression that the Countess derived some kind of satisfaction from the imminence of her departure.
She could not reconcile the contradiction, and it worried her a little. She believed—quite justly—that Madame de Varigny had conceived a real affection for her, and, as far as she herself was concerned, she had considerably revised her first impressions of the other, finding more to like in her than she had anticipated, noticeably a genuine warmth and fervour of nature, and a certain kind-hearted capacity for interesting herself in other people.
And, liking her so much better than she had at first conceived possible, Jean resented the sudden recurrence of her original distrust produced by the suggestion of insincerity which she thought she detected in the Countess’s expressions of regret.
On the face of it the thing seemed absurd. She could imagine no conceivable reason why her departure should give Madame de Varigny any particular cause for complacency, which only made the more perplexing her impression that this was the actual feeling underlying the latter’s cordial interest in her projected visit to England.
On the morning of her departure, Jean’s mind was too preoccupied with the small details attendant upon starting off on a journey dwell upon the matter. But, as she shook bands with Madame de Varigny for the last time, the recollection surged over her afresh, and she was strongly conscious that beneath the other woman’s pleasant, “Adieu, mademoiselle! Bon voyage!” something stirred that was less pleasant—even inimical—just as some slimy and repulsive form of life may stir amid the ooze at the bottom of a sunlit stream.
CHAPTER VIII—THE MAN FROM MONTAVAN
JEAN arrived in London with a good three hours to spare before the South-Western express, by which she proposed to travel to Devonshire, was due to leave Waterloo Station. She elected, therefore, to occupy the time by touring round the great, unknown city of her dreams in a taxicab, and spent a beatific hour glimpsing the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, and the old, grey, misty river that Londoners love, and skirmishing in and out of the shops in Regent Street and Bond Street with her hands full of absurd, expensive, unnecessary purchases only bought because this was London and she felt she just simply must have something English at once, and winding up with a spin through Hyde Park—which didn’t impress her very favourably in its winter aspect of leafless trees and barren stretches of sodden grass.