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

"Certainly unexpected. One could hardly have foreseen that Louis would select a Roman Catholic convent, of all places, for his daughter's education. Of course," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, suddenly remembering her policy of conciliation, "a Roman Catholic convent is very nice for Roman Catholics; but for anyone else"

"You need have no fears on that score, I assure you," said the Baronne kindly. "The nuns are always quite willing to receive non-Catholic children. There will be no difficulty."

"I never supposed there would be," Mrs. Lloyd-Evans returned, with some heat. "Of course they will, no doubt, be delighted to take my niece as a boarder. It is of the child herself that I am thinking. I fear a convent is far from being the place that my poor dear sister would have selected for her."

The Baronne's expression was one of courteous concern.

"Esmée was, naturally, very devoted to her own— to the Church," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with some stretch of imagination, "and one can't help feeling that, if only she were here to look after her only child, there would be no idea of such places as convents for Zella."

"No doubt, if Zella's mother were still alive, the question of her leaving Villetswood would not have arisen," assented the Baronne quietly.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans saw her opportunity.

"I do not know how it Ms arisen," she said meaningly, fixing a penetrating eye on the totally unmoved Baronne. "Louis had no thought of such a thing when he left England. Some influence must have been at work to put the idea into his mind."

"Ah!" said the Baronne, shrugging her shoulders, "as you will readily understand, I ask no questions. A stepson is but a stepson, and even of one's nearest relations one has no right to ask intrusive questions. Louis is well of an age to make up his own mind."

"No doubt, but the question is, Has he made it up, or has someone been making it up for him? I can understand that, to a member of the Roman Church, it might even appear a good thing for Zella to be sent to a convent," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans broad-mindedly, " and I am afraid some mistaken influence may have been at work on Louis. I quite see that, from their point of view, the best thing that could happen would be for Zella to be made into a Roman Catholic—as she certainly will be, if she goes into a convent."

"Dear me!" said the Baronne, looking politely shocked, "has her own faith, then, so light a hold upon her? I thought the child had been better grounded."

"So she has," agitatedly retorted Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. "But you forget what a child she is—only fifteen, and very impressionable. She has inherited her father's temperament."

"Her father's temperament has not yet led him to change his religion, although he is forty years old."

"Louis was never sen---t" sharply began Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, and then perforce stopped.

"Convents do not, indeed, admit pupils of the opposite sex," the Baronne mildly informed her.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans hastily turned to another branch of the subject.

"Why not a good school ?" she demanded plaintively. "Zella has been very badly educated up to the present. She did lessons with my little daughter for a while in the winter, and the governess was quite shocked to see how backward that child is with arithmetic and geography, and, in fact, all that thorough groundwork which is so indispensable. She knows practically nothing, compared to Muriel. Now, the Sisters at the convent may teach plain sewing and perhaps embroidery or illumination very nicely," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, whose conceptions of a convent did not appear to extend beyond the Middle Ages, "but what about a modern, up-to-date English education?"

"Ah, happily, there is no need to discuss that, even," said the Baronne airily. "There is a class to which your admirable women workers belong—highly trained governesses and the like—all of whom have great need of the up-to-date education of which you speak, and profit by it fully, to their infinite credit. But when Zella goes into the world to which she naturally belongs, who will require of her a demonstration in algebra, or the latitude and longitude of Peru? Reading and her own intelligence will supply her with that general information which is so agreeable an adjunct to well-bred conversation; and for the rest, the essential is that she should carry herself well, and, needless to add, speak and understand one or two languages besides her own," said the Baronne in remarkably fluent English.

Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, who had been given no opportunity for a display of her halting French, looked suspicious.

"But Louis surely will not leave Zella in a foreign country," she said at last.

"There are many convents in your hospitable country," said the Baronne pleasantly, "so no doubt he will easily find a suitable one in England. In a large community many nationalities are, naturally, represented, and Zella will have the advantage of learning Italian, or German, from teachers of those nationalities.'

"And who will her school companions be, pray?" demanded Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. "One would wish her to make some nice friends who would be useful to her later on, girls whose mothers will be giving dances in London, when Zella comes out."

"As to London," negligently replied the Baronne, "no doubt Louis will pick up many old threads, should he wish to do so, when Zella makes her debut. But at the convent,' I need not point out to you, she will have the inestimable advantage of finding herself among girls of many nationalities besides English and Irish."

'One does not know who they may be," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans gloomily. "I have always said, give me an old English name that one has heard of, and I ask no more."

"The noble families of our old Catholic countries frequently send their daughters to England for a convent education. Many of my friends have done so—the de Clamieres, the poor Marchesa di San Andrea, the de la Roche Glandy. But I need not continue. In a certain world everyone knows everyone, at least, by name—is it not so?" amiably inquired the Baronne, receiving, however, no response from her visitor, who had never before heard one of the names enumerated.

A most unwonted sense of being baffled had assailed the unfortunate Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. "Had Louis consulted me, I should have told him that I could not approve of the idea of a convent," she repeated feebly.

"Ah," said the Baronne, "I rejoice that you have been spared. It is so distressing, so ungracious a task, to express disapproval of the scheme of another. To do so unasked is, of course, unthinkable, but how frequently do the tactless force one into the admission of feelings that delicacy and good-breeding would bid one conceal!"

Delicacy and good-breeding were perhaps responsible for the silent speed with which Mrs. Lloyd-Evans began to put on her gloves again.

"I must say good-bye," she said agitatedly, "and I feel sure you will understand that all I have said arises only from my affection and anxiety for my dear, dear sister's only child."

"Perfectly, perfectly," warmly replied the Baronne, also rising, and ringing the bell.

"Your anxiety is well to be understood, and I am more than happy to have relieved it. Hippolyte, une voiture de place pour madame."

Thus it was that ten minutes later the astonished Henry beheld his wife emerge from that vehicle of destruction, a Paris fiacre, apparently too much distraught to have any very clear idea as to how she had ever found herself inside it.

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