Madame had her dressing-case and her mysteries, and palpably stood in need of repairs; so away I went to my studies.  The room which we called the school-room was partly beneath the floor of Madame’s bed-chamber, and commanded the same view; so, remembering my governess’s peering glance from her windows, I looked out, and saw Cousin Monica making a brisk promenade up and down the terrace-walk.  Well, that was quite enough to account for it.  I had grown very curious, and I resolved when our lessons were over to join her and make another attempt to discover the mystery.

As I sat over my books, I fancied I heard a movement outside the door.  I suspected that Madame was listening.  I waited for a time, expecting to see the door open, but she did not come; so I opened it suddenly myself, but Madame was not on the threshold nor on the lobby.  I heard a rustling, however, and on the staircase over the banister I saw the folds of her silk dress as she descended.

She is going, I thought, to seek an interview with Lady Knollys.  She intends to propitiate that dangerous lady; so I amused some eight or ten minutes in watching Cousin Monica’s quick march and right-about face upon the parade-ground of the terrace.  But no one joined her.

‘She is certainly talking to papa,’ was my next and more probable conjecture.  Having the profoundest distrust of Madame, I was naturally extremely jealous of the confidential interviews in which deceit and malice might make their representations plausibly and without answer.

’Yes, I’ll run down and see—­see papa; she shan’t tell lies behind my back, horrid woman!’

At the study-door I knocked, and forthwith entered.  My father was sitting near the window, his open book before him, Madame standing at the other side of the table, her cunning eyes bathed in tears, and her pocket-handkerchief pressed to her mouth.  Her eyes glittered stealthily on me for an instant:  she was sobbing—­desolee, in fact—­that grim grenadier lady, and her attitude was exquisitely dejected and timid.  But she was, notwithstanding, reading closely and craftily my father’s face.  He was not looking at her, but rather upward toward the ceiling, reflectively leaning on his hand, with an expression, not angry, but rather surly and annoyed.

‘I ought to have heard of this before, Madame,’ my father was saying as I came in; ’not that it would have made any difference—­not the least; mind that.  But it was the kind of thing that I ought to have heard, and the omission was not strictly right.’

Madame, in a shrill and lamentable key, opened her voluble reply, but was arrested by a nod from my father, who asked me if I wanted anything.

’Only—­only that I was waiting in the school-room for Madame, and did not know where she was.’

‘Well, she is here, you see, and will join you up-stairs in a few minutes.’

So back I went again, huffed, angry, and curious, and sat back in my chair with a clouded countenance, thinking very little about lessons.