The French lessons, with her assistance, proceeded prosperously. She became an inmate in Mrs. Marvyn's family also. The brown-eyed, sensitive woman loved her as a new poem; she felt enchanted by her; and the prosaic details of her household seemed touched to poetic life by her innocent interest and admiration. The young Madame insisted on being taught to spin at the great wheel; and a very pretty picture she made of it, too, with her earnest gravity of endeavor, her deepening cheek, her graceful form, with some strange foreign scarf or jewelry waving and flashing in odd contrast with her work.
"Do you know," she said, one day, while thus employed in the north room at Mrs. Marvyn's,—"do you know Burr told me that princesses used to spin? He read me a beautiful story from the 'Odyssey,' about how Penelope cheated her lovers with her spinning, while she was waiting for her husband to come home;—he was gone to sea, Mary,—her true love,—you understand."
She turned on Mary a wicked glance, so full of intelligence that the snowdrop grew red as the inside of a sea-shell.
"Mon enfant! thou hast a thought deep in here!" she said to Mary, one day, as they sat together in the grass under the apple-trees.
"Why, what?" said Mary, with a startled and guilty look.
"Why, what? petite!" said the fairy princess, whimsically mimicking her accent. "Ah! ah! ma belle! you think I have no eyes;—Virginie sees deep in here!" she said, laying her hand playfully on Mary's heart. "Ah, petite!" she said, gravely, and almost sorrowfully, "if you love him, wait for him,—don't marry another. It is dreadful not to have one's heart go with one's duty."
"I shall never marry anybody," said Mary.
"Nevare marrie anybodie!" said the lady, imitating her accents in tones much like those of a bobolink. "Ah! ah! my little saint, you cannot always live on nothing but the prayers, though prayers are verie good. But, ma chère," she added, in a low tone, "don't you ever marry that good man in there; priests should not marry."
"Ours are not priests,—they are ministers," said Mary. "But why do you speak of him?—he is like my father."
"Virginie sees something!" said the lady, shaking her head gravely; "she sees he loves little Mary."