Bidiane followed her, but when Mrs. Watercrow would have pushed open the door confronting them, she caught her hand.
"The divil," said her surprised relative, "do you want to scare the life out of me?"
"Knock," said Bidiane, "always, always at the door of a bedroom or a private room, but not at that of a public one such as a parlor."
"Am I English?" exclaimed Mirabelle Marie, drawing back and regarding her in profound astonishment.
"No, but you are going to be,—or rather you are going to be a polite Frenchwoman," said Bidiane, firmly.
Mirabelle Marie laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. She had just had presented to her, in the person of Bidiane, a delicious and first-class joke.
Claudine came out of her room, and silently stared at them until Bidiane took her hand, when her handsome, rather sullen face brightened perceptibly.
Bidiane liked her, and some swift and keen perception told her that in the young widow she would find a more apt pupil and a more congenial associate than in her aunt. She went into the room, and, sitting down by the window, talked at length to her of Narcisse and the Englishman.
At last she said, "Can you see Madame de Forêt's house from here?"
Mirabelle Marie, who had squatted comfortably on the bed, like an enormous toad, got up and toddled to the window. "It's there ag'in those pines back of the river. There's no other sim'lar."