The Admiral's Daughter

by Margaret Stuart Lane

The Frenchwoman meanwhile was sniffing in the recesses of Marion's trunk. 'I have not smelt so great a sweetness, Mademoiselle, since I was a small little one—so—playing in the garden of my uncle in Avignon, a thousand years ago!'

'All my mother's things still smell sweet,' said Marion to her aunt. 'She made her own waters, and grew lavender and roses and all sorts of flowers specially for them. I cannot make them near so well. Mistress Trevannion says my mother was very beautiful, too. But Father will never talk of her, except,' added Marion disconsolately, 'to say I do not in the least resemble her.'

The eyes of mistress and sempstress met over the golden brown head. Marion at the moment was busying herself with another small trunk, and took from it a japanned box.

'I had almost forgotten this, Aunt Constance,' she said. 'Father gave it to me in the greatest hurry, just when Curnow was fastening the boxes. If I had not known his ways, I should have thought he had been angry. But it was just that he did not want me to ask any questions.'

She opened the box with a little gold key. Inside was a length of heavy embroidered silk, worked in cream and gold, on a cream ground, with a straying touch of blue and green. Pinned to the end of the length was a slip of paper.

'Your mother was working this for you, and talking of when you would be grown, just before she died,' ran the words. 'Wear it, my child.' Nothing more.

'That was a very sweet lady,' emphatically said the Frenchwoman as she examined the length, the other two standing silent a space.

'It is most beautiful,' said Lady Fairfax. Then she glanced at the script again, and in spite of Marion's solemn look she chuckled a little.

'"Wear it!" says my lord. "Wear it!" How? Pinned on the front of your bodice? I'll warrant my brother is firmly of the idea he has given you a gown. But there's something else in this trunk—another box——'

Marion fumbled with the lid, and presently disclosed a casket with a velvet lining. Curled in the folds of the velvet lay a necklace of turquoise and pearl.