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"Now remember twelve o'clock," was her godmother's parting speech; and she thought she certainly should. But the prince's attentions to her were greater even than the first evening, and in the delight of listening to his pleasant conversation, time slipped by unperceived.
So off they set; and Griselda, in her arm-chair by the ante-room fire, with some queer little old-fashioned books of her aunts', which she had already read more than a dozen times, beside her by way of amusement, felt that there was one comfort in her troubles she had escaped the long weary drive to her godmother's. But it was very dull. It got duller and duller.
Godmother had what Mary Alice called "a duchess friend" of whom she was very, very fond. The Duchess was a woman about Godmother's age, and quite as lovely to look at as a duchess should be. She was mistress of many and vast estates, and wore on occasions a coronet of diamonds and strings of pearls "worth a king's ransom," just like a duchess in a story.
It was a land of splintered peaks, of deep, dry gorges, of barren mesas burnt by the suns of a million torrid summers. The normal condition of it was warfare. Life here had to protect itself with a tough, callous rind, to attack with a swift, deadly sting. Only the fit survived. But moonlight had magically touched the hot, wrinkled earth with a fairy godmother's wand.
She was glad to be back that was the first point: just as an adventurous sheep is glad to regain the cover of the flock. Learning might be hard; the governesses mercilessly secure in their own wisdom; but here she was at least a person of some consequence, instead of as at Godmother's a mere negligible null.
"It shall shut its door," Mary Champion said indignantly. "He is frightening them because they are old and have no son to lean upon. Garret Dawson is an evil plotter and schemer, and there is blood and tears on his money. Aghadoe shall be safe from him." "How can he have frightened them?" I asked. "They have never borrowed money from him." The cloud deepened on my godmother's face.
But at last, when she was almost sick with suspense, Mary put her tidy head in once more. "Miss Rambotham has been called for." Laura was on her feet before the words were spoken. She sped to the reception-room. Marina, a short, sleek-haired, soberly dressed girl of about twenty, had Godmother's brisk, matter-of-fact manner. She offered Laura her cheek to kiss. "Well, I suppose you're ready now?"
She set down his teacup which she had just lifted with gentle reverence off the mantel, where he left it, and went closer to Godmother. Her lips were trembling, but she did not have to speak. "I know, Precious I know," whispered Godmother. She sat down in a big chair close to the fire the chair he had just left and Mary Alice sat on the hearth-rug and nestled her head against Godmother's knees.
Then, very strangely, I seemed to hear them, not in the reader's voice, but in the well- remembered voice of my godmother. This made me think, did Lady Dedlock's face accidentally resemble my godmother's?
The next day was the last of the Russian old year the 13th of January new style and when Tamara appeared about ten o'clock in her godmother's own sitting-room, a charming apartment full of the most interesting miniatures and bibelots collected by the great Ardácheff, friend of Catherine II., she found the Princess already busy at her writing table. "Good-morning, my child," she said.
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