Stasy sighed.
“I daresay she has got a lovely home somewhere, and relations who make a great pet of her, and—and—oh, just everything in the world she wants,” she said.
Blanche looked at her sister doubtfully.
“Perhaps she has, but perhaps not,” she replied. “It isn’t always those lucky people who are the happiest. But, Stasy, I do wish you wouldn’t be so lugubrious: the air of London doesn’t seem to suit you.”
“I am not lugubri— what a dreadful word!—I am quite cheerful to-day. It is so interesting to be going to choose our new house. Mamma, shall we have to buy a lot of furniture, or will there be enough of what we had at home?”
“My dear Stasy—of course not. What a baby you are! Don’t you remember that we sold by far the greater part to the Baron de Var? Dear me, yes; we shall have to buy all sorts of things.”
Stasy’s eyes sparkled.
“That will be delightful,” she said. “I am so glad. So if we settle to take the house at once, we shall be ever so busy choosing things. That’s just what I like.”
Her good spirits lasted, and, indeed, increased, to the end of the journey. It was exhilarating to get out of the murky London air, even though in the country it was decidedly cold, and even slightly misty. As they approached her old home, Mrs Derwent grew pale with excitement.
“To think,” she said to her daughters, “of all that has happened since I left it, a thoughtless girl, that bright October morning, when my father drove me in to the station, and gave me in charge to the friend who was to take me to Paris, where young Madame de Caillemont, as we called her—the daughter-in-law of our old friend—met me, to escort me to Bordeaux. To think that I never came back again till now—with you two, my darlings, fatherless already in your turn, as I was so soon to be then.”