Several times afterward, during this sojourn in the house, Floy was aware of a repetition of Mary’s fixed, searching look, and that the Madame also, in the pauses of her grief, regarded her more than once in much the same manner.
Each time it struck our heroine as strange, but she soon forgot it in thoughts of Espy or the lost parent of whom she was still in quest.
Now that she had not Frisky to take her attention, the Madame took to poring over the miniature again, often weeping bitterly the while; sometimes Mary overheard such murmured words as these:
“Pansy, Pansy, my little Pansy! Oh, I can never forgive myself! My darling, my darling!”
One morning Madame Le Conte awoke with a sudden resolution, and surprised her maid with an unusual order.
“Mary,” she said, “I shall call upon my solicitor to-day. Tell Rory to have the carriage at the door at eleven o’clock. Then bring me my breakfast and dress me at once for the street.”
“What’s up now?” inquired Mary of herself as she hastened downstairs in obedience to the order; “is she going to make a will and leave a lot of money to that pretty Miss Kemper? And all because she looks like that picture in the locket? Well, well, if it had only happened to be me now, how lucky ’twould have been!”
Having come to her resolve, Madame Le Conte was in feverish haste to carry it out, scolded because her breakfast was not ready on the instant, and fretted and fumed over her toilet, accusing Mary of being intentionally and exasperatingly slow.
But the maid bore it with unruffled equanimity, perhaps looking to the possibility of a fat legacy.