BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF “PATRICIA KEMBALL.”

CHAPTER XVII.

WHAT MUST COME.

If Madame de Montfort could not teach Leam some of the things generally considered essential to the education of a gentlewoman, if her orthography was disorderly, her grammar shaky, her knowledge of geography, history and language best expressed by x, and her moral perceptions never clear and seldom straight, she was yet far in advance of a girl whose training in all things was so infinitely below even her own dwarfed standard.  Madame could read with native grace and commendable fluency, making nimble leapfrogs over the heads of the exceptionally hard passages, but Leam had to spell every third word, and then she made a mess of it, Madame did know that eight and seven are fifteen, but Leam could not get beyond five and five are ten and one over makes eleven.  If madame thought deception the indispensable condition of pleasant companionship, and lies the current coin of good society—­in which she certainly sided with the majority of believing Christians—­Leam would be none the worse for a little softening of that crude out-speaking of hers, which was less sincerity than the hardness of youthful ignorance and the insolence of false pride.  If madame was only lacquer, and not clear gold all through, Leam had not the grace of even the thinnest layer of varnish, and might well take lessons in the religion of appearances and that thing which we call “manner.”  Madame did know at least how to bear herself with the seeming of a lady, and could say her shibboleth as it ought to be said.  Thus, she ate with delicacy and held her knife nicely poised and balanced, but Leam grasped hers like a whanger, and cut off pieces of meat anyhow, which as often as not she took from the point.  Mamma had eaten with her knife grasped also like a whanger, and why might not she? she said when madame remonstrated and gave her a lecture on the aesthetics of the table.  And why should she not make her bread her plate, and hold both bread and meat in her hand if she liked?  Why was she to wipe her lips when she drank? and why, traveling farther afield, was she to speak when she was spoken to if she would rather be silent?  Why get up from her chair when ladies like Mrs, Harrowby and Mrs. Birkett came into the room?  They did not get up from their chairs when she went into their rooms, and mamma never did.  And why might she not say what she thought and show what she disliked?  Mamma said what she thought and showed what she disliked, and mamma’s rule was her law.

All these objections madame had to combat, and all these things to teach, and many more besides.  And as Leam was young, and as even the hardest youth is unconsciously plastic because unconsciously imitative, the suave instructress did really make some impression; so that when she assured the incredulous neighborhood of Leam’s improvement she had more solid data than always underlaid her words, and was partly justified in her assertion.