E. Delafield - The Collected Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated Edition)

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans still avoided the expressions " grave" or "churchyard," and used such euphemisms as the present one, when speaking to Zella.

"I wish you could have paid a little visit there, dear, before going away, just to say good-bye to it."

"Oh, so do I! cried Zella, who had not thought of it before, but now felt a sudden wish that she and her father had been returning to Villetswood before leaving England. "But it isn't really good-bye; we shall be back in a month or two."

"I hope so," sighed Mrs.Lloyd-Evans. "Good-night, dear child, and remember that you can always count upon a welcome here whenever you like, and for as long as you please."

Zella knew that it was true, and felt more ashamed than ever for having wanted so much to go away from kind Aunt Marianne and dear Muriel.

The next day she and her father left Boscombe.

"Good-bye, Marianne, and thank you a hundred times for being so good to Zella. I wish I could tell you how grateful I am."

"Good-bye, Louis. One is so glad to have done all one could. . . . Take care of yourself, and let us know when you have arrived safely. Zella, my dear child, good-bye, and don't forget to write to Aunt Marianne. God bless you!" Mrs. Lloyd-Evans added in a low voice: " Be a great comfort to poor papa."

"Good-bye, Zella," said Muriel, hugging her. "You will write to me, won't you?"

"Yes, of course I will; and you'll write to me, won't you? Good-bye, Muriel darling "

"Good-bye, Uncle Henry."

"Good-bye, Zella."

"Good-bye."

The hall resounded with farewells.

At last Zella and her father were in the carriage, and Zella and Muriel had waved handkerchiefs from the hall door and the carriage window respectively, and the horses had turned down the drive and out of sight.

"Oh, I wonder when Zella will be back here again," instantly sighed Muriel.

"You had better run up to the schoolroom, darling," said her mother. And she remarked to her husband, when Muriel was out of hearing: "Henry, one never realized before, when dear Esmée's influence was there, how very foreign poor Louis really is."

"H'm. I see what you mean, ' was Henry's non-committal rejoinder. He did not see particularly, but Mrs. Lloyd-Evans at once enlightened him.

"What Englishman," she sighed, "would dream of taking a child like Zella, who is already rather a spoilt, artful little thing, to such a place as Rome? Mark my words, Henry; I should not be in the least surprised if the next thing we hear is that poor Louis, who is very weak and easily led, has been got hold of by some artful old Cardinal and turned into a Roman Catholic."

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ZELLA followed her father up the narrow stone stairs to the mezzanino of the house in the Via Gregoriana where lodged the Baronne de Kervoyou and her daughter.

She had not seen the Baronne for what seemed to her a very long while. The last time had been in Paris, when she and her father and mother had stayed at the Hôtel Meurice for a fortnight. The memory of that time, which seemed so unutterably bright in the retrospect, brought the ready tears to Zella's eyes.

She felt rather nervous, though she would not have acknowledged it, and wondered if Grand'mère would make any allusion to her mother. If so, Zella thought, she would very likely begin to cry.

But when they were admitted, by a smiling and bowing man-servant in a white apron, into the small salon, Zella perceived that there was to be no display of emotion.

The Baronne de Kervoyou, stouter than ever, rose with difficulty from her chair, said, " Ah, mon ami, vous voila!" very quietly and kissed her stepson on both cheeks.

She gave her hand to Zella, who curtseyed very prettily, and then stooped and kissed her forehead.

"Stéphanie!"

Stéphanie de Kervoyou, hovering in the background, came forward eagerly to greet her half-brother, and spoke kindly and affectionately to Zella. The conversation for the first few moments was entirely of the journey, of the rooms engaged by Stéphanie at the pension in Via Veneto, for Louis and his daughter, and of their arrival on the previous night.

Zella sat silent. She looked at Grand'mère, and wished, as she had often wished before, that Grand'mère wore more of the aspect that youthful romance would fain attribute to a Baronne de Kervoyou, descended from the Royal House of Orleans, and united by marriage to that ancient and honourable Huguenot family of which Zella's father was the last representative.

The Baronne was seventy years of age, exceedingly stout, and magnificently upright. Her white hair was drawn back from her large, plain old face under a small black lace mantilla, and she habitually wore the stiffest of black silk dresses. She had never been beautiful, and had known such poverty as only the impoverished aristocracy of France can know, until her marriage, at twenty-seven, to Andre de Kervoyou. Her family had looked upon her tardy alliance with the rich Breton widower as a mésalliance ; for the title was of Huguenot creation, whereas the oldest blood of a Royal Family ran in the veins of the poor and unbeautiful Gisele de la Claudiere de Marincourt. She never mentioned the fact, and never forgot it.

The solitary weakness of her life had been her marriage with un protestant.

She had failed to fulfil the many injunctions laid upon her by her confesseur to convert Andre de Kervoyou and his little son, whose mother had been an Englishwoman. And on the condition that she would never attempt to do so, the Baron, when his daughter Stéphanie was born, had allowed her to be baptized into her mother's faith.

Her word given, the Baronne kept it faithfully, even against the peremptory advice of her confesseur, when her husband had died before his son was five years old.

The Baronne changed her confesseur, and confided the religious instruction of her stepson to a ministre protestant of her acquaintance.

She never indulged in remorse, and was wont to say, when remonstrated with by her scandalized Catholic relations: "A promise is a promise. One does not go back upon one's word. Ca ne se fait pas." The words were characteristic of her. "Pour moi, quand on a dit Ca ne se fait pas, on a tout dit," she would admit, with her curt laugh.

Zella, who remembered the aphorism of old, supposed that a display of emotion was among the things that are not done, since Grand'mère was imperturbably discussing with her father the exceedingly dull and impersonal matter of a recent change of Ministry in France.

She looked at Tante Stéphanie, who had at once taken up her interminable embroidery.

She was a thin, sallow edition of her mother, her fine, straight brown hair brushed back from a high forehead and pushed slightly forward, her complexion colourless, and her aquiline nose ornamented by gold-rimmed pince-nez.

Tante Stéphanie had not changed.

Although Zella did not know it, Stéphanie de Kervoyou had hardly changed at all in the last twenty years. She had looked equally middle-aged as a pensionnaire, as a young girl, and as a spinster who had long since coiffee Ste. Catherine.

Presently she turned to Zella, and said:

"Your first visit to Rome, child! I look forward to showing you all the beautiful churches and galleries and buildings. St. Peter's, of course, must be your first visit.''

Her voice, low and musical, was her sole charm.

"I am longing to see it all," said Zella rather timidly. She was not sure of any artistic tendencies in herself, but her most passionate desire, as always, was to adapt herself to her surroundings.

"You must let me take her out this afternoon, Louis," said Stéphanie eagerly. "It will be a treat for me to have a companion. I do not know if you are busy?"

"Not at all; and if you will lunch with me at the pension we could all go to St. Peter's together. Provided that my mother can spare you?" he added, turning respectfully to the Baronne.