Zella had never heard anything so nearly approaching a lecture from her father, and it struck her, dimly, as curious that it should be on such a subject.
"I do understand," she said quaveringly.
Her father kissed her, and said, "Yes, my dear child," very gently, and they went slowly towards the house.
Zella had the old childish sense of having been naughty strong upon her; but when she went to bed and thought over the evening, she could only tell herself that her father's first approach to a scolding had been because she had broken down and cried, and, when interrogated, had spoken of her dead mother.
Zella wept again a little in self-pity at having had her confidence so strangely received, but her last waking thought was a vision of herself, youthful and white-clad, fearless and smiling, awaiting the stroke of the guillotine before a sobbing and awe-stricken crowd.
Louis de Kervoyou, however, took his daughter back to Rome two days earlier than he had originally intended to, and sought the one person from whom he had always asked counsel—his stepmother.
"So," said the Baronne, "the little one has une crise d'emotion at the sound of a church bell, weeps a few harmless and no doubt mildly enjoyable tears, and you, my poor Louis ! read her a long lecture upon self-control—all, I make no doubt, au grand serieux—and send her away with some reasonable grounds for feeling herself misunderstood and her natural feelings repressed."
"What else could I do ?"
"You could have treated it more lightly, mon ami— laughed at her a little. A sense of humour is the great cure for these attacks of youthfulness," said the Baronne hopefully.
"No," said Louis gravely. "The child was speaking to me of her mother, almost for the first time since Esmée's death."
"True. Poor child! her grief may well be sincere enough, though that little demonstration of it was prompted by what might be qualified as a sense of the appropriate."
But, my dear mother, a sense of the appropriate should not govern these things; for if it does so, then they cease to be genuine and entitled to respect."
"Louis," said the Baronne, "in spite of your grey hairs, I perceive that you are still young. I, who am seventy, can assure you that you will find most things in the world to be a mixture. As for Zella, she has merely the failings incidental to her age and temperament. I have become aware of them during these last two months, and do not like the child any the less for being true to type."
"But there is such a thing as excess," observed Louis dryly.
"No doubt, and that is why, since you pay me the compliment of asking for my advice, I am going to suggest that Zella should be sent to school."
"Surely you do not advise that!"
"I think the society of her contemporaries will do more for her than we can, at her present stage of development; and, indeed, I believe you will agree with me when you consider the alternatives: Villetswood, where she must of necessity be left a good deal to her own introspective tendencies; or that terrible Lloyd-Evans household," said the Baronne with considerable candour.
"Marianne was exceedingly kind to Zella, according to her lights," justice impelled Louis to observe.
The Baronne brushed away Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's kindness with a wave of the hands.
"She has given the child false standards, from what I can gather, besides a terrible little morocco-bound copy of Thomas a Kempis with the worst print I have ever seen in my life, and a vulgar pencil-mark under every other line," said the Baronne inconsequently.
They both laughed a little.
"No, Louis, I assure you that a year or two with girls of her own age will give Zella a different outlook. Remember, she has always been an only child, and is, besides, unusually sensitive and impressionable. She ought to see something of the normal life of girls of her own class."
"I do not know that she will see anything of the sort at an average girls' school."
"Heaven forbid," piously ejaculated the Baronne, "that she should be sent to an establishment where young ladies are taught to hit at one another's shins with iron clubs on a muddy field. I was thinking of a convent school, needless to say, where she would at least be taught the manners of a gentlewoman by gentlewomen."
"Would there be no objection to her not being a Catholic?
"None whatever. Non-Catholic children are often received as pupils by the nuns."
"Zella would no doubt want to become a Catholic if she lived in that atmosphere."
"That is as it may be," observed the Baronne dryly. "At all events, I can assure you that no pressure of any sort would be put upon her. Ca ne se fait pas."
"I am sure of it, said Louis, smiling a little. "Nor, as you know, should I object to it. if later on Zella wished to become a Catholic, although I should require proof that it was a veritable, and not an emotional, conviction."
"She would not be received by the Church otherwise," said the Baronne staunchly.
Stéphanie de Kervoyou entered the room noiselessly, but prepared to withdraw on seeing her mother and Louis in consultation.
He sprang up.
"Do not go, Stéphanie. We are discussing the possibility of my sending Zella to a convent school. It would have to be in England," he added, turning to the Baronne; " I could not leave her abroad, and business will necessitate my returning home before Easter."
Stéphanie's pale eyes gleamed. Was this the answer to her many prayers for the conversion of her niece?
"Are you indeed thinking of it, Louis?" she asked eagerly.
"If Zella does not object too strongly to the idea," he replied, "I am inclined to agree with my mother that it would be the best thing for her."
Zella, far from objecting to the idea, received it gladly. She found her life monotonous, and viewed the idea of school as a rosy vista of triumphant friendships and universal popularity.
"Only I would like to go back to Villetswood first," she told her father rather timidly.
"You shall, mignonne. We will all go to Paris together at the end of the month, and then you and I will go home for a week or two, and you can start when the Easter holidays are over."
Zella was excited and pleased, and only wished that her father could have told her then and there which convent was to be the scene of her future successes.
An added cause for satisfaction, though Zella would not have admitted it to herself, was the sense that she was about to enter an atmosphere which her Aunt Marianne, at a safe distance where remonstrance could be of little avail, would certainly consider pernicious, alike to her niece's temporal and spiritual welfare.
X
WHILE Zella's Tante Stéphanie was devoutly burning candles before every shrine in Rome, in humble and ardent thanksgiving for the immense grace of a convent education which was to be bestowed on Zella—in direct reply, no doubt, to her many prayers—Zella's Aunt Marianne was indignantly demanding of the Almighty an instant reversal of the horrible decision that should introduce her niece into the artful snare laid for her by the devil, well known as the instigator of all Roman Catholic plots.
But it was not Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's way to leave Providence