“Ah! yes,” thought Geneviève with a little toss of the head, “ah! yes! It is plain to be seen I am no longer only the little Casalis, ma chère Madame Rousille! A day may come when thy awkward Stéphanie will think with yet more respect of her old school companion.”
She smiled at a thought that crossed her mind. “Yes,” she said to herself, “I should like to see what Stéphanie would think of Lingthurst;” and for a minute or two she sat still in a pleasant reverie, the letter lying idly on her lap. Then she took it up again. Had she read it all? No, there were a few lines on the other side of the last page; a postscript bearing the date of a day later than the letter itself.
“I have just received the letter of my cousin Helen,” said the postscript,” thy aunt, as she tells me she makes thee call her. She tells me of thy meeting again with the family Fawcett; that is to say that the relations of Colonel Methvyn are indeed the same as the English family of thy adventure! It is truly very amusing that it should be so. I remember them well. I wish now I had tried to see Lady Frederica at the time when I heard the name from thee; it would have been pleasant to me to see some of my child’s new friends. Give the enclosed to Mrs. Methvyn. I have but a moment in which to write to her, so it is not worth a separate postage; but I shall write soon again to thank her more fully for all her kindness to thee.”
Where was the enclosure? Geneviève looked about her,—yes, there it lay on the carpet at her feet, whither it had fluttered when she first hastily drew out the letter from its envelope. A tiny enclosure it was, evidently but a half sheet of paper, but pretty closely written upon, as Geneviève could see from the blank side. How she wished her mother had forgotten to enclose it, how she wished she could read its contents! The sight of it had destroyed all her pleasure in her own letter, for the postscript suggested an unpleasant probability. In this little note to her aunt, written immediately on the receipt of Mrs. Methvyn’s letter, was it not almost certain that her mother would allude to Geneviève’s recognition by Mr. Fawcett, the result of which would be the betrayal to Cicely and her mother of the indirect falsehood in which Geneviève had taken refuge that evening when asked by her aunt how it was that Madame Casalis had not recognised the familiar name of Fawcett? Geneviève had given Mrs. Methvyn to understand that her mother had not done so, she had even suggested as reasons for this her own pronunciation of the name and Madame Casalis’ preoccupation of mind at the time? And why had she thus misled her aunt? Because she did not wish the Methvyns to know that she was aware of the probable identity of the two families and that her mother had immediately suggested it. She did not want them to know that she had purposely refrained from frankly inquiring about the Fawcetts, because she felt instinctively that they would have thought her reticence strange and ungirl-like. She had no explanation to give that they would have thought adequate, or satisfactory, or even intelligible, and indeed, seen with the eyes of her present discomfort, such reasons as she was conscious of having had for her reserve now appeared to herself foolish in the extreme; and even could she bring herself to confess to the only one she could plainly express in words—the romantic anticipation of bursting upon the hero of her adventure surrounded by the prestige of mystery and unexpectedness she was painfully certain that her cousin Cicely would be the last girl in the world to sympathise with such folly.
“She is so stiff—so English—she takes everything ‘au pied de la lettre,’” reflected. Geneviève with a curious mixture of respect and contempt. “She would think me so silly!”
Her cheeks burned at the thought. Then her glance fell again on the tiresome little letter. What a complication it, or her own folly, had brought her into! What disagreeable sifting of motives, what uncomfortable suspicions, what generally undesirable stirring of the smooth waters of her present surroundings might not the reading of this stupid note be the introduction to! If only her mother had not been in such a hurry to answer her aunt’s letter, there might have been time for Geneviève to write and beg her not to allude to her recognition of the Fawcett family by name; the girl felt sure she could trust to her mother to comply with such a request, and to wait for an explanation till some future day when Geneviève might give it by word of mouth—(by which time she hoped her mother would have forgotten all about it). Then a new idea struck her, why should she not still do so, why not take advantage of the fortunate circumstance of the note’s being confided to her care? She looked at it, she turned it about, and wished that she could read it; but it was sealed, and was most plainly not intended for other eyes than Mrs. Methvyn’s. And somehow, the idea of destroying it startled Geneviève.
“I know what I shall do,” she thought suddenly. “I shall send it back to mamma! I will write to her to-day and enclose it, and I will beg her to answer my aunt’s letter at once, and not to tell my aunt that she had said to me the Fawcetts might be the same she had known. That will make it all right—my aunt will not have expected an answer so soon—the few days’ delay cannot do harm.”
She set to work immediately, she wrote an affectionate letter to Madame Casalis, explaining her reason for retaining the little note and begging her to write without the allusion she dreaded. “Say only, dear mamma,” she wrote, “that it was curious the English family should be the same, that it was a pity Miladi Fawcett came not to our house; but say no more, and trust to thy Geneviève to explain to thee afterwards her reasons.” Then she begged her mother to forgive her for what she was doing, not to think she was in any way forgetting her good counsels now that she was away from her, and wound up with loving assurances of her affection and pretty little expressions of gratitude for the motherly love and care she had never valued so highly as since she had been separated from this mère chérie.
When the letter with its enclosure was all ready to be posted; sealed, addressed, and stamped, Geneviève breathed more freely. She put it into her pocket to be ready for the post-bag, and went downstairs to look for her aunt and cousin, uneasy lest her long absence should have attracted their attention. They were not in the library, but her cousin’s maid, whom she met in the passage, told her that Miss Cicely was busy writing in the colonel’s room, and that her aunt was out in the garden, giving directions about some new beds.
“It is all right then; they have not missed me,” thought Geneviève, and she went down again to the library, and played and sang in perfect comfort till the gong sounded for luncheon.