“No, not so far. I went but across the park. The moon shone so bright. I saw it from my window, and I thought I would go.”
Cicely looked at her in perplexity.
“I wish I could understand you, Geneviève,” she said wistfully. “Do you mean that it was just a fancy for going out in the moonlight that made you behave so strangely? I could have sympathised with the wish, if you had mentioned it to me? I am a girl like yourself, why do you seem so afraid of me? We might have gone out a little together. Mamma would not have minded for once in a way. But I thought you disliked moonlight.”
“I never saw it so bright and beautiful as to-night,” said Geneviève, evidently beginning to recover her spirits.
“Nor I,” said Cicely. “It is an unusually lovely night. Well then, Geneviève, the next time you have a fancy for a moonlight ramble tell me and we will go together.”
She spoke lightly, for though still a little perplexed her mind was on the whole relieved.
“Yes, dear Cicely, I will,” said Geneviève. “But I thought you would think me so silly. And when I turned to come home I felt frightened, and I ran so fast! I was quite tired when I got back, and then I thought you would scold me.”
She was chattering away quite as usual by now. Cicely smiled. “You must go off to bed now, you silly child,” she said, kissing her cousin as she spoke.
Geneviève turned to go, but as she moved, an end of her cloak caught in the chair near which she had been standing. She stooped to disengage it; as she did so something fell from her hand with a sharp sound on the floor. Before she could pick it up Cicely had caught sight of it. It was a large key.
“The key of the plantation door!” exclaimed Cicely in amazement. “Oh! Geneviève, you told me you had only been across the park! What did you take the key for? Why cannot you be frank and straightforward?”