"Never you mind! She was on the stage; not what you English call good. But she was good to me; and she wished me to be what she was not. When I was twelve she put me into a convent. La maudite place!"
Herbert laughed. He knew enough of French to understand the expression.
"It was maudite to me. I must not dance; I must not sing; I must not have my liberty to do the simplest thing on earth. I must be up in the morning to prayers; and then at my lessons all day; and then at prayers again. I did pray. I did pray to the Virgin to take me from it. I nearly prayed my heart out—and she never heard me! I had been there a year—figure to yourself, a year!—when my mother came to see me. She had been back in Italy. 'Take me away,' I said to her, 'before I die!' 'No, Bianca mia,' she answered, 'I leave you here that you may not die; that your life may be happier than mine is, for mine is the vraie misère.' I not tell you in Italian, as she spoke, for you not understand it," rapidly interrupted mademoiselle. "My mother, she continued to me: 'When you are instructed, you shall become a gouvernante in a family of the noblesse; you shall consort with the princes without shame; and perhaps you will make a good parti in marriage. Though you have no fortune, you will be accomplished; you will have the manière and the tournure; you will be belle.' Do you think me belle?" she abruptly broke off again.
"Enchanting!" answered Herbert. "Have I not told you so five hundred times?"
She stole a glance at the little old-fashioned oval glass which hung over the mantel-piece, and then went on.
"My mother would not take me out. Though I lay on the flagstones of the visitors' parlour, though I wept for it, she would not take me out. 'It is for your good, Bianca mia,' she said. And I remained there seven years. Seven years! Do you figure it?"
"But I suppose you grew reconciled?"
"We grow reconciled to the worst in time," she answered, dreamily gazing into the fire with her strange eyes. "I pressed down my despair into myself at first, and I looked out for the opportunity to run away. We were as closely kept as the nuns in their cells, in their barred rooms, in their grated chapel; but, sooner than not have had my will and get away, I would have set the place on fire!"
"I say, mademoiselle, don't you talk treason!" cried Herbert, laughing.
"Do you think I would not?" she answered, turning to him, a gleaming look in her eyes. "But I had to wait for the opportunity to escape; and, while I waited, news came that my mother had died. She caught cold one night when she was in her evening robe, and it settled in her throat, and formed a dépôt, and she died. And so it was all over with my escape! My mother gone, I had nowhere to fly to. And I stopped in that enfer seven years."