Léonie reined in short, guiltily aware of trespass. The youthful fisherman saw her first, and called to the lady on the tree-trunk.
“Look, mamma!”
The lady looked in the direction of his pointing finger, and raised her brows in quick surprise.
“I am very sorry,” Léonie stammered. “The wood was so pretty—I will go.”
The lady rose, and went forward across the strip of grass that separated them.
“It’s very well, madam. Why should you go?” Then she saw that the little face beneath the hat’s big brim was that of a child, and she smiled. “Will you not dismount, my dear, and bear me company a while?”
The wistful, uncertain look went out of Léonie’s eyes. She dimpled, nodding.
“S’il vous plaît, madame.”
“You’re French? Are you staying here?” inquired the lady.
Léonie kicked her foot free of the stirrup, and slid to the ground.
“But yes, I am staying at Avon. I am the—bah, I have forgotten the word!—the—the ward of Monseigneur le Duc.”
A shadow crossed the lady’s face. She made a movement as though to stand between Léonie and the children. Léonie’s chin went up.
“I am not anything else, madame, je vous assure. I am in the charge of Madame Field, the cousin of Monseigneur. It is better that I go, yes?”
“I crave your pardon, my dear. I beg that you will stay. I am Lady Merivale.”
“I thought you were,” confided Léonie. “Lady Fanny told me of you.”
“Fanny?” Jennifer’s brow cleared. “You know her?”
“I have been with her two weeks, when I came from Paris. Monseigneur thought it would not be convenable for me to be with him until he had found a lady suitable to be my gouvernante, you see.”
Jennifer, in the past, had had experience of his Grace’s ideas of propriety, and thus she did not see at all, but she was too polite to say so. She and Léonie sat down on the tree-trunk while the small boy stared round-eyed.
“No one likes Monseigneur, I find,” Léonie remarked. “Just a few, perhaps. Lady Fanny, and M. Davenant, and me, of course.”
“Oh, you like him, then?” Jennifer looked at her wonderingly.
“He is so good to me, you understand,” explained Léonie. “That is your little son?”
“Yes, that is John. Come and make your bow, John.”
John obeyed, and ventured a remark:
“Your hair is quite short, madam.”
Léonie pulled off her hat.
“But how pretty!” exclaimed Jennifer. “Why did you cut it?”
Léonie hesitated.
“Madame, please will you not ask me? I am not allowed to tell people. Lady Fanny said I must not.”
“I hope ’twas not an illness?” said Jennifer, with an anxious eye to her children.
“Oh no!” Léonie assured her. Again she hesitated. “Monseigneur did not say I was not to tell. It was only Lady Fanny, and she is not always very wise, do you think? And I do not suppose that she would want me not to tell you, for you were at the convent with her, n’est-ce pas? I have only just begun to be a girl, you see, madame.”
Jennifer was startled.
“I beg your pardon, my dear?”
“Since I was twelve I have always been a boy. Then Monseigneur found me, and I was his page. And—and then he discovered that I was not a boy at all, and he made me his daughter. I did not like it at first, and these petticoats still bother me, but in some ways it is very pleasant. I have so many things all my own, and I am a lady now.”
Jennifer’s eyes grew soft. She patted Léonie’s hand.
“You quaint child! For how long do you think to stay at Avon?”
“I do not quite know, madame. It is as Monseigneur wills. And I have to learn so many things. Lady Fanny is to present me, I think. It is nice of her, is it not?”
“Prodigious amiable,” Jennifer agreed. “Tell me your name, my dear.”
“I am Léonie de Bonnard, madame.”
“And your parents made the—the Duke your guardian?”
“N-no. They have been dead for many years, you see. Monseigneur did it all himself.” Léonie glanced down at the babe. “Is this also your son, madame?”
“Yes, child, this is Geoffrey Molyneux Merivale. Is he not beautiful?”
“Very,” said Léonie politely. “I do not know babies very well.” She rose, and picked up her plumed hat. “I must go back, madame. Madame Field will have become agitated.” She smiled mischievously. “She is very like a hen, you know.”
Jennifer laughed.
“But you’ll come again? Come to the house one day, and I will present my husband.”
“Yes, if you please, madame. I should like to come. Au revoir, Jean; au revoir, bébé!”
The baby gurgled, and waved an aimless hand. Léonie hoisted herself into the saddle.
“One does not know what to say to a baby,” she remarked. “He is very nice, of course,” she added. She bowed, hat in hand, and turning, made her way back along the path down which she had come, to the road.
Jennifer picked up the baby, and calling to John to follow, went through the wood and across the gardens to the house. She relinquished the children to their nurse, and went in search of her husband.
She found him in the library, turning over his accounts, a big, loose-limbed man, with humorous grey eyes, and a firm-lipped mouth. He held out his hand.
“Faith, Jenny, you grow more lovely each time I look upon you,” he said.
She laughed, and went to sit on the arm of his chair.
“Fanny thinks us unfashionable, Anthony.”
“Oh, Fanny—! She’s fond enough of Marling at heart.”
“Very fond of him, Anthony, but she is modish withal, and likes other men to whisper pretty things in her ear. I fear that I shall never have
