“I hope papa won’t set his heart upon it,” said Cicely with a faint smile. But she did not oppose the suggestion as vehemently as a few hours before.
“Then, you don’t object to my telling Geneviève?” asked her mother.
“Of course not, if you think it best,” said Cicely. “I wish, however, you would not tell her quite yet. Wait a few days. I think she is beginning to feel more at home with me. She will not be surprised at seeing Trevor often here; she knows they are our cousins.”
“Very well,” said Mrs. Methvyn.
Geneviève’s last thought that night before she went to sleep was of Mr. Fawcett. To her girlish fancy the coincidence of their meeting again was suggestive of all manner of speculations.
“How I wish Mathurine knew of it,” she said to herself; “how delighted she would be! She thought him so handsome and distinguished. So he certainly is, and his manners are so agreeable, not at all like those of most Englishmen, cold and gloomy” (forgetting her extremely limited experience of Mr. Fawcett’s countrymen). “And then how rich they must be! Ah, how I should have enjoyed travelling with them! No doubt they had a courier, an appartement au premier—everything of the best.”
And another idea entered her silly little head. How delightful would be a wedding journey to Paris with such a hero—rich, amiable, living but to gratify her wishes! Such things had come to pass, thought Geneviève; such good fortune had been the lot of portionless girls far inferior to herself in personal attractions. She did not fear her cousin Cicely as a rival; the idea never even occurred to her. She liked Cicely, and was very well pleased to make a friend of her, but in some respects she could hardly help looking down upon her a little. “She is so good and wise,” thought Geneviève, “but so slow and quiet. English girls never seem half awake. And her dress; bah! if I had all the money she has to spend upon it, would I be content to wear such plain things? She might make herself look twice as well if she liked.”
Such was the maiden meditation, such the “fancy free” of the pasteur’s daughter, who had been brought up in the seclusion and simplicity of a French Protestant household, sheltered, as her parents fondly thought, from every breath of worldliness or ambition.
Mr. Fawcett made his appearance again about luncheon-time the next day. Cicely was alone in the morning room when he came in.
“I’ve been to see the new man,” he said, establishing himself on a comfortable low chair and looking ready for a cousinly chat. “I’m hardly fit to come in here, Cicely; I’m covered with dust.”