quite good-looking, but with an awfully respectable expression.  Any one could tell he was married even without looking at his wedding ring.  He was polite, and made conversation all the time in the train, and as the engine kept puffing and shrieking I was obliged to continually say “Pardon?” so it made it rather heavy.  I think he has changed a good deal since their wedding—­let me see—­that must be eight years ago, as I was nine then; I hardly remembered him.

Godmamma was waiting for us in the hall when we arrived.  Chateau de Croixmare is a nice place, but I am glad I am not French.  It was the hottest night of the year almost, and not a breath of air in the house, every shutter closed and the curtains drawn.  Heloise had gone to bed with a migraine, Godmamma explained, but Victorine was there.  She has grown up plain, and looks much more than five years older than me.  They weren’t in evening dress, or even tea-gowns like in England—­it did seem strange.

Mme. de Croixmare looks a dragon!  I can’t think how poor papa insisted upon my having such a godmother.  Her face is quite white, and her hair so black and drawn off her forehead, and she has a bristly moustache.  She is also very up right and thin, and walks with an ebony stick, and her voice is like a peacock’s.  She looked me through and through, and I felt all my French getting jumbled, and it came out with such an English accent; and after we had bowed a good deal, and said heaps of Ollendorfish kind of sentences, I was given some “sirop” and water, and conducted to bed by Victorine.  She is a big dump with a shiny complexion, and such a very small mouth, and I am sure I shall hate her, she isn’t a bit good-natured-looking like Jean.  The house is really fine Louis XV., and my bedroom and cabinet de toilette are delicious, so is my bed; but the attitude of Agnes—­such a conscious pride in the superiority of France—­nearly drove me mad.

There isn’t a decent dressing-table mirror, only one in an old silver frame about eight inches square, and that is sitting on the writing-table—­or what would be the writing-table, if there happened to be any pens and things, which there aren’t.  All the hanging places open out of the panels of the wall, there are no wardrobes, only beautiful marble-topped bureaux; but I was so tired.

[Sidenote:  A French Family at Home]

I left Agnes to settle everything and jumped into bed.  This morning I woke early, and had the loveliest cup of chocolate, but such a silly bath, and almost cold water.  There are no housemaids, and nothing is done with precise regularity like at home, although they are so rich.  Agnes had to fish for everything of that sort herself, and such a lot of talking went on in the passage between her and the valet de chambre, before I even got this teeny tiny tray to splash in.  However, I did get dressed at last, and went for a walk in the garden—­not a soul about but a few gardeners.  The begonias are magnificent, but there is no look of park beyond the garden, or nice deer and things that we would have for such a house in England.  It is more like a sort of big villa.