Part 7 (1/2)
”Please don't spill the white of egg, or upset the gold-leaf. And as I shall be pupil-teacher of the youngest cla.s.s next term, I suppose I ought to tell you that 'seldomer' isn't in the English dictionary.”
”I'm glad of it. I like my own words to belong to me, my own self. I should be ashamed to owe everything I say to silly Nuttall or stupid old Webster. You're artful, Lynette Mildare, trying to change the conversation. I say you don't sympathise with me properly in my affairs of the heart--and you never, never tell me about yours.”
The beautiful black-rimmed, golden-tawny eyes laughed as some eyes can, though there was no quiver of a smile about the purely-modelled, close-folded lips.
”Don't tell me you never have, or never had, any,” scolded Greta. ”You're too lovely by half. Don't try to scowl me down--you are! I'm pretty enough to make the Billy Keyses stand on their silly heads if I told them to, but you're a great deal more. Also, you have style and grace and breeding.
Anybody could tell that you came of tremendously swell people over away in England, where the Dukes and Marquesses and Earls began fencing in the veld somewhere about the eleventh century, to keep common people from killing the deer, or carving their vulgar names on the castle walls, and coming between the wind and their n.o.bility. There's a quotation from your dear Shakespeare for you! He does come in handy sometimes.”
”Doesn't he!” agreed Lynette, with an ardent flush.
”And you're descended from some of the people he wrote about,” pressed Greta. ”Own it!”
There was a faint line of sarcasm about the lovely lips.
”Shakespeare wrote of clowns and churls as well as of Kings and n.o.blemen.”
”If you were a clown, you wouldn't be what you are. The very shape of your head, and ears, and nails, bespeaks a Princess, disguised as a finished head-pupil, going to take over a cla.s.s of grubby-fingered little ones--pah!--next term. And don't we all know that an English d.u.c.h.ess sends you your Christmas and Easter and birthday gifts! Come, you might as well speak out, when this is my last term, and we have always been such dear friends, and always will be,” coaxed Greta, ”because the d.u.c.h.ess lets you out, you know!”
She said it so quaintly that Lynette laughed, though there was a pained contraction between the delicate eyebrows and a vexed and sorrowful shadow on her face. Greta went on:
”We have all of us always known that you were--a mystery. Has it got anything to do with the d.u.c.h.ess?”
The round, shallow blue eyes were too greedily curious to be pretty at the moment. Lynette met them with a full, grave, answering denial.
”No; I am nothing to the d.u.c.h.ess of Broads, or she to me. She is sister to the Mother-Superior, and she sends to me at Christmas and Easter, and on birthdays, by the Mother's wish. Doesn't the Mother's second sister, the Princesse de Dignmont-Veziers, send Katie”--Katie was a little Irish novice--”presents from Paris twice a year?”
Greta's pretty eyebrows went up. Her blue greedy eyes became circular with surprise.
”Yes, of course--out of charity, because Katie was a foundling, picked up in the Irish quarter in Cape Town.”
Lynette went on steadily, but, looking out of the window at the great wistaria that climbed upon the angle of the Convent wing in which were the nuns' cells.
”If Katie was a foundling, I am nothing better.”
”Lynette Mildare, you're never in earnest?”
The shocked tone and the scandalised disgust on Greta's pretty face stung and hurt. But Lynette went on:
”I speak the truth. The Mother and the Sisters, who have always known it, have kept the secret. In their great considerate kindness, they have never once let me feel there was any difference between me and the other girls--not once in all these years. And I can never thank them enough--never be grateful enough for their great goodness--especially _hers_.” The steady voice shook a little.
”We all know that you have always been the Mother's favourite.” There was a little cool inflection of contempt in Greta's high, sweet, birdlike tones that had been lacking before. ”And she is the niece of a great English Cardinal, and the sister of a d.u.c.h.ess and a Princess, and her step-brother is an Earl.” The inflection added for Greta: ”_And yet she turns to the charity child!_”
Lynette said in a low voice:
”It is because she is perfect in the way of humility. She is beyond all pride ... greater than all prejudice ... she has been more to me than I can say, since she and Sister Ignatius and Sister Tobias found me on the veld seven years ago, when they were trekking up from Natal to join the Sisters who were already working here.”
Greta's face dimpled, and the bright, cold eyes grew greedy again. There was a romance, after all.