nd the more you are with her the better.'

'I understand then, Mr. Ruthyn, you weesh I should resume my instructions?'
asked Madame.

'Certainly; and converse all you can in French with Mademoiselle Maud. You
will be glad, my dear, that I've insisted on it,' he said, turning to me,
'when you have reached France, where you will find they speak nothing else.
And now, dear Maud--no, not a word more--you must leave me. Farewell,
Madame!'

And he waved us out a little impatiently; and I, without one look toward
Madame de la Rougierre, stunned and incensed, walked into my room and shut
the door.

CHAPTER LV

_THE FOOT OF HERCULES_

I stood at the window--still the same leaden sky and feathery sleet before
me--trying to estimate the magnitude of the discovery I had just made.
Gradually a kind of despair seized me, and I threw myself passionately on
my bed, weeping aloud.

Good Mary Quince was, of course, beside me in a moment, with her pale,
concerned face.

'Oh, Mary, Mary, she's come--that dreadful woman, Madame de la Rougierre,
has come to be my governess again; and Uncle Silas won't hear or believe
anything about her. It is vain talking; he is prepossessed. Was ever so
unfortunate a creature as I? Who could have fancied or feared such a thing?
Oh, Mary, Mary, what am I to do? what is to become of me? Am I never to
shake off that vindictive, terrible woman?'

Mary said all she could to console me. I was making too much of her. What
was she, after all, more than a governess?--she could not hurt me. I was
not a child no longer--she could not bully me now; and my uncle, though he
might be deceived for a while, would not be long finding her out.

Thus and soforth did good Mary Quince declaim, and at last she did impress
me a little, and I began to think that I had, perhaps, been making too much
of Madame's visit. But still imagination, that instrument and mirror
of prophecy, showed her formidable image always on its surface, with a
terrible moving background of shadows.

In a few minutes there was a knock at my door, and Madame herself entered.
She was in walking costume. There had been a brief clearing of the weather,
and she proposed our making a promenade together.

On seeing Mary Quince she broke into a rapture of compliment and greeting,
and took what Mr. Richardson would have called her passive hand, and
pressed it with wonderful tenderness.

Honest Mary suffered all this somewhat reluctantly, neve