Lord Houghton.
LAST days are generally sad, sometimes terrible things. Sad enough were these last days at Greystone: Cicely felt thankful when they were over, though once gone, she would have given years of life to recall them. It was a relief to both her mother and herself when Geneviève left them, and they were free to take farewell of the places they had loved so dearly, without the painful associations of her presence, gentle and subdued as she remained to the end. It was a relief to them, and they were conscious too that it could not but be a relief to her.
“I shall tell my mother all,” she had said to Cicely, and Cicely was glad to hear of her intention.
“You are right to tell her, Geneviève,” she said, “though no one else would ever have done so.”
But Geneviève’s confession was deferred. She did not, after all, return to Hivèritz as proposed, for there came news from Madame Casalis of a fever having broken out in the household, which threatened to be of a serious kind and without doubt infectious; one of the boys and little Eudoxie were already prostrated by it; the latter, it was feared, likely to have it badly. Under these circumstances, therefore, it was proposed by Geneviève’s parents that she should only go as far as Paris and stay there under the care of an old school friend of Madame Casalis, who was by no means averse to receiving as a visitor the ‘promise’ of a wealthy young ‘milord.’ Geneviève shed tears over her mother’s letter, expressed herself désolée at the thought of the anxiety in her family, but ended by deciding that her persisting in returning home to the modest little house in the Rue de la Croix blanche, would only add to her mother’s trouble and distress.
“It is best I should go to Madame Du plessis,” she said resignedly. “As mamma wishes it, it is best I should not ask still to go home.”
And her satisfaction with her own decision was not a little increased when, the night before she was to leave, her aunt gave her, to expend upon her trousseau, a sum of money which was now to Mrs. Methvyn by no means the trifle it would have been a few weeks before.
“She is my relation, however she has behaved,” said Cicely’s mother. “It would never do for her to enter the Fawcetts’ family without a proper outfit.”
“And I can get everything in Paris,” thought Geneviève delightedly. And her expressions of gratitude were so evidently sincere that even Mrs. Methvyn’s heart was a little softened to her, and she bade her good-bye with more kindliness of manner than might have been expected.
It ended in Geneviève’s remaining in Paris till her marriage—her father and mother joining her there only a few days before it took place. How much or how little, therefore, of the true history of her daughter’s love affairs was confided to Madame Casalis, Cicely did not till long afterwards know, though from the tone of her letters to Mrs. Methvyn it was evident that “poor Caroline’s” satisfaction in Geneviève’s brilliant prospects was not unalloyed.