"'Bursting to let out of me'!" Lady Campstown was certain that she knew no one who would have been responsible for that peculiar phrase, but the joyous appeal of the young voice and eyes, the radiantly smiling mouth, were not to be resisted.
"You feel it, then?" she said, smiling in return.
"Down to the ground!" said the tall girl. "I don't believe I ever had such thrills in my life before. I've been walking up and down under these oranges and lemons and palms, wondering if it can be I? To think we're to have this little heaven all to ourselves for daddy to get well in! You see, there are only my father and myself, and we know very few people over here in Europe. We are Americans."
"I believe so," said Lady Campstown, with restraint.
"The villa was taken for us through our doctor in Paris, who had seen it, and told daddy. I thought the rooms in our hotel in Paris too lovely for anything, but this goes a long way ahead. I've got that splendid big front chamber with the dressing-room and bath, and the sort of little porch covered with vines, where the servants seem to expect me to have my breakfast by myself. The truth is, I don't care where I eat these old continental breakfasts; only rolls and coffee, and perhaps one miserable little egg, and that extra, I'm always hungry again by eleven. Daddy's got a huge room opposite mine, all carved furniture with a bed like a church pew, but he likes it, and the man nurse that takes care of him says he's better already for the change. It's ridiculous for only us two to try to fill this regular little palace, isn't it? If I were home, I could ask some of the girls, but, over here, I don't know any but one, and we haven't actually got a chaperon for me yet. We talked of it, you know, but when it came to the point, daddy dreaded her being perched up between us like Poe's raven, at meals, and everywhere, and so we put it off. Perhaps, if you live here you wouldn't mind giving me a word of advice about how to do things. There's a housekeeper that goes with the house, and she engaged the extra servants, such a lot I never saw! I came out into the garden to get rid of the whole kit and boodle of them! But after a while I'll learn my way, and then not feel so awkward as I do now. Maybe you are thinking it strange why I don't know these things, but I've no mother, and no near relations but daddy, and till now we've lived in a very plain way, at home."
Lady Campstown's heart melted incontinently. The rapidity and scope of the girl's confidences were atoned for by her youth and the direct gaze of her childlike eyes, to say nothing of the beauty that had been sinking into the old lady's impressionable senses. Also, her ladyship was always genuinely interested in the details of a perilous illness; and those of the invalid's recent grave attack of pneumonia were received with not to say satisfaction, but something that nearly approached it. She gave the girl much sound advice, and as they strayed together onward from point to point through the grounds, which Lady Campstown knew con amore, she found herself equipped with an astonishing relish for the situation so unexpectedly attained. When they were both quite out of breath with talking and walking, she furthermore accepted, graciously, an invitation to step indoors and rest. She had thought her new friend a tyro in social arts, but when they reached the top of the long, hot gleaming flight of white marble stairs, and stood together between the potted bamboos and pelargoniums in the vestibule, was pleased to have her step back with charming grace and execute a little curtsey, saying:
"I don't think you can know that my name is Pamela Winstanley, and I'd be very glad if you wouldn't mind telling me yours."
It is not, therefore, to be numbered among things incredible that soon after four o'clock that afternoon, when the sun like a ball of fire had dropped behind the blue barrier of the Esterels, leaving the world to darkness and a sudden glacial chill, Miss Winstanley, attended by one of her brand-new footmen carrying a sheaf of rare roses, repaired, in her turn, through the little green doorway in the flowery wall dividing Villa Reine des Fées from Villa Julia. She was wrapped in a smart fur-lined cloak, and her mission was to take tea with Lady Campstown!
A trim maid ushered her into the long, low drawing-room with its hangings of sunflower yellow, its mirrors and consoles and twin Empire sofas, its square of dull red Turkey carpet in the centre of a slippery waste of parquetry, its brass-trimmed tables and chairs, bought with the house and never altered. But over all had been diffused a look of home that Villa Reine des Fées could not attain. There was a folding screen covered with miniatures, behind the couch whereon Lady Campstown sat crocheting in rosy wool one of the new pélérines neigeuses; there were flowers and books and a wide writing-table, with silver bound blotting book and silver fittings. A small table, covered with a web of white linen and lace that a Cardinal might have worn upon a day of festa, was spread for the tea to be brought in by and by; and Posey did not know that, to fit it to her guest's age and supposed tastes, Lady Campstown had sent a special messenger to the rue d'Antibes for marrons glâcés and wondrous crystallized fruits!
A little fire of gnarled olive roots, pine cones, and eucalyptus boughs was blazing on the hearth. The girl, carrying her own flowers now, paused on the threshold with an exclamation of delight.