and some of these she had been exhibiting now to the person she held
both in awe and adoration. Her kinship to this elegant, dark-haired
lady had only recently been explained, and Pauline was trying to
accustom herself to being addressed as "ma tante" and "tante cherie"
with other endearing and embarrassing terms of regard.

But the time was going on and Miss Clairville turned from the window; a
very little of Angeel was all she could stand just now.

"At this rate our beautiful view will soon disappear," she said,
sitting down beside the basket-chair. "See then, _mon enfant_, how
already the ice drips off the trees and all the pretty glass tubes are
melting from the wires overhead! It is so warm too, like a day in
spring. _Eh! bien_, I must go now back to my friends who are waiting
for me. I have nothing more to show little girls. You have now the
beads, the satin pincushion, and the little red coat that is called a
Zouave jacket--see how gay! and you will find it warm and pleasant to
wear when your kind _maman_ makes it to fit you. And here too are the
crayons to paint with and a new slate. _Soyez toujours bonne fille,
p'tite_, and perhaps some day you will see your poor aunt again."

"Not my poor aunt! My rich, _rich_ aunt."

"Ah--_tais toi, ma p'tite_! But you, too, are not poor any longer.
That reminds me, I must have a little talk with your kind _maman_."

With some difficulty overcoming her dislike of the individual and
aversion to the entire family arrangement, Pauline walked out to the
hall which separated the faded _salon_, where she had been sitting,
from the still untidy bedroom and called for Artemise. In a few
moments the widow of Henry Clairville came in sight at the top of the
staircase leading to the upper room, her bright black eyes dulled and
frightened and her hands trembling visibly, for was not Mlle.
Clairville her enemy, being not only a relative now by marriage but her
late mistress, tyrant and superior? But the certainty of leaving the
neighbourhood in a very few days put Pauline so much at her ease that
she could afford to show her brightest and most amiable side to her
sister-in-law, and thus she made a graceful if authoritative advance to
the bottom of the staircase and stretched forth both her white hands,
even going the length of imprinting a slow kiss on the other's sunburnt
cheek. Few could at any time have resisted the mingled charms of so
magnetic a personality, with