"Ah, happily, there is no need to discuss that, even," said the Baronne airily. "There is a class to which your admirable women workers belong—highly trained governesses and the like—all of whom have great need of the up-to-date education of which you speak, and profit by it fully, to their infinite credit. But when Zella goes into the world to which she naturally belongs, who will require of her a demonstration in algebra, or the latitude and longitude of Peru? Reading and her own intelligence will supply her with that general information which is so agreeable an adjunct to well-bred conversation; and for the rest, the essential is that she should carry herself well, and, needless to add, speak and understand one or two languages besides her own," said the Baronne in remarkably fluent English.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had been given no opportunity for a display of her halting French, looked suspicious.
"But Louis surely will not leave Zella in a foreign country," she said at last.
"There are many convents in your hospitable country," said the Baronne pleasantly, "so no doubt he will easily find a suitable one in England. In a large community many nationalities are, naturally, represented, and Zella will have the advantage of learning Italian, or German, from teachers of those nationalities.'
"And who will her school companions be, pray?" demanded Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. "One would wish her to make some nice friends who would be useful to her later on, girls whose mothers will be giving dances in London, when Zella comes out."
"As to London," negligently replied the Baronne, "no doubt Louis will pick up many old threads, should he wish to do so, when Zella makes her debut. But at the convent,' I need not point out to you, she will have the inestimable advantage of finding herself among girls of many nationalities besides English and Irish."
'One does not know who they may be," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans gloomily. "I have always said, give me an old English name that one has heard of, and I ask no more."
"The noble families of our old Catholic countries frequently send their daughters to England for a convent education. Many of my friends have done so—the de Clamieres, the poor Marchesa di San Andrea, the de la Roche Glandy. But I need not continue. In a certain world everyone knows everyone, at least, by name—is it not so?" amiably inquired the Baronne, receiving, however, no response from her visitor, who had never before heard one of the names enumerated.
A most unwonted sense of being baffled had assailed the unfortunate Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. "Had Louis consulted me, I should have told him that I could not approve of the idea of a convent," she repeated feebly.
"Ah," said the Baronne, "I rejoice that you have been spared. It is so distressing, so ungracious a task, to express disapproval of the scheme of another. To do so unasked is, of course, unthinkable, but how frequently do the tactless force one into the admission of feelings that delicacy and good-breeding would bid one conceal!"
Delicacy and good-breeding were perhaps responsible for the silent speed with which Mrs. Lloyd-Evans began to put on her gloves again.
"I must say good-bye," she said agitatedly, "and I feel sure you will understand that all I have said arises only from my affection and anxiety for my dear, dear sister's only child."
"Perfectly, perfectly," warmly replied the Baronne, also rising, and ringing the bell.
"Your anxiety is well to be understood, and I am more than happy to have relieved it. Hippolyte, une voiture de place pour madame."
Thus it was that ten minutes later the astonished Henry beheld his wife emerge from that vehicle of destruction, a Paris fiacre, apparently too much distraught to have any very clear idea as to how she had ever found herself inside it.
XI
IT must be admitted that, in the days that followed her return with her father to Villetswood, Zella was far from proving herself an ideal companion. Her mind was obsessed by the thought of her approaching school life, and even the return to Villetswood, so rich in emotional possibilities, was only one more milestone on the way to school, and was marked by no very acute demonstration of feeling. But Louis, remembering Zella's tears at Frascati, thought remorsefully that the poor child no longer dared to let youthful sentiment have its way in his presence, and told himself sadly that no man was fit to have the management of a sensitive child.
Later on, Zella was wont to speak with a certain touching wistfulness of long lonely days spent by a solitary motherless child in the great gardens of Villetswood. These may perhaps have covered a period of fifteen days, and then Zella made her farewells, more excited than touching, to the servants and to the old house and garden, and was taken by her father to begin life as a boarder at the Holy Cross Convent, on the outskirts of London.
"You shall come straight back if you are not happy, remember," said Louis, anxiously surveying his little daughter's pale face as the cab turned out of the station. Zella squeezed his hand very tightly, partly as a vent to her increasing excitement, partly because she thought some sign of trepidation appropriate to the moment.
"Is it far?" she asked.
"No; your grandmother told me it was only fifteen minutes' walk from the station. We must be nearly there already."
They were, and as the iron gates and stone walls came into view Zella made the unoriginal but entirely heartfelt observation:
"How like a prison!"
Up a short, wide avenue and across a rectangular gravelled court, and then the cab stopped in front of a square Georgian portico that looked oddly unimposing by comparison with the huge irregular grey building behind it.
Zella looked for bolts and bars, but saw neither, and the door was opened almost immediately by a small shrivelled figure in black habit and white cap.
She conducted them straight into the parlour, and shuffled away on creaking slippers to fetch the Reverend Mother.
Zella had occasionally visited a convent in Rome with her Aunt Stéphanie, and was less appalled than her father at the hideousness of the room in which they found themselves.
High straight-backed chairs with cane seats stood all round the walls, or were arranged in prim groups of threes and fours near the centre of the room, where stood a large round table bearing a pot of artificial palms with large photograph albums and books piled symmetrically round it.
Louis took up one of the books, and put it down again as he read the title—" Letters of Advice to a Convert."
A bracket on the wall supported a clumsily modelled coloured plaster figure, looking oddly foreshortened seen from below, and a crucifix hung above it.
There was one picture in the room, a badly painted portrait in oils of an aged woman in nun's habit, with upturned eyes and clasped hands raised on high.
Zella and her father had ample opportunity for scrutinizing their surroundings, since nearly half an hour had elapsed before the lay Sister who had admitted them put her head in at the door, and said to Louis very triumphantly, "Reverend Mother will be here in one moment now," and then disappeared.
"Does she suppose we have had no time in which to prepare ourselves for the meeting?" said Louis rather grimly.
Zella was too nervous to make any reply. The door opened again, this time to admit Reverend Mother herself. She was a tall stooping woman, with that curious ageless look so often to be seen on the faces of those living in the cloister, and spoke English with the strong harsh accent of a Spanish woman from Malaga. She greeted Louis with a dignified inclination, but gave her hand to Zella, and begged them both to be seated. She herself sat very upright, not leaning back, with hands folded under her wide black sleeves.
Louis