"De Courcelles, ganache!" replied the
countess, addressed as bourgeoise.

"Thanks for the compliment," the driver, who
was a good-natured fellow, replied. "Je vous
la souhaite belle et bonne, madame. Am I to
have anything else by way of pour-boire?
Hahoheup! Ostrogoth of a rhinoceros!" The latter
speech was addressed to one of the white horses,
which was essaying to lunch on his neighbour's
near blinker. And they went on again.

They reached a street where there were no
houses to be seen, only a double succession of
staring white stone-walls, of different heights,
and, here and there, a heavy green door. At one
of these doors, the number five, the carriage drew
up. The coachman rang a bell which dangled
by a long wire from the wall, and this was
presently answered by a lad in a shabby livery, and
whose face was fearfully scarred with the small-pox.
Lily's trunk was alone removed, and the
coachman was ordered to wait. The
pock-marked lad conducted them across a dreary
court-yard, in the interstices of whose stones
rank dank herbage grew, up a broken flight of
mildewed stone steps, across a bare hall, or
vestibule, papered green, which smelt very mouldy
and felt very damp, and so into a dismal saloon
with an oak floor, laid in a pattern like a
chessboard, and which was so highly polished, that
Lily slipped on her entrance, and was very near
tumbling down.

She was bidden to sit on a vast chintz-
coloured sofa, and remained there, frightened,
and listening to the harsh ticking of an
ormolu-clock on the mantelshelf. The lady left
her at the expiration of ten minutes, and Lily
thought she could hear voices in an adjoining
apartment. She remained on the sofa for another
ten minutes, and then she heard a door bang
violently. Through one of the tall windows
(which reached almost to the ground) she saw
the form of the handsome lady retreating across
the court-yard. The shabby lad opened the door
for her. She ascended the carriage. She was
gone. Lily's heart sank within her. She was
now left Quite Alone indeed.

CHAPTER XXV. LA PENSION MARCASSIN.

THE child's hand was on the handle of the
lock; but it turned on the other side, and a
person came in.

She was tall and shapely, and had once been
handsome; but she had bidden farewell to middle
age, and, without pleading guilty to imminent
antiquity, would have had little chance, if
arraigned, of averting a true bill. Of her good looks,
only enough was left to make her angry at the
remembrance of having been comely. Her hands,
attenuated and long fingered though they were,
retained their symmetry, and were dazzlingly
white. But they were heartless-looking hands—
cruel hands, more accustomed, if manual expression
can be eloquent, to give buffets than to give
charity. The nails looked as though they had
been bitten, not pared. Her hair, iron, not silver
grey, was disposed in plain bands beneath a rigid
cap of point lace if you will, but hard and spiky,
as though it had been wrought out of some white
metal. She was tall, very tall, and was draped
in one long black silk dress, more like a pillow-
case than a gown, falling in few folds, and those
stiff and angular. A great cross of dull gold
was at her neck, and that was all the ornament
she wore. Her voice was chilly and windy. The
words came as though a door had been slightly
opened, a draught of cold air let in, and then
closed.

"I am Mademoiselle Marcassin," she said.

She spoke in English, but with a foreign
accent, fainter and harder than that which marked
the speech of the strange lady. Her words fell
like drops of iced water upon Lily's trembling
heart.

"Stand before me, here, in the light, so,"
continued Mademoiselle Marcassin. "Listen to me
with all your attention."

She placed her white thin hands on the child's
shoulders, turned her round, and dressed her up,
in a military manner, by the window. Anon
she drew aside a louvre shutter, and the whole
daylight came in, white and almost blinding.

"I wish you to see me very plainly," she
remarked. "Look in my eyes. Mark them well.
Tell me if they look soft and yielding."

Lily did mark them. She was too frightened
to say what she thought, but to her mind those
eyes were grey, hard, baleful, merciless.

"I am your schoolmistress," went on
Madmoiselle. "You are sent here to be taught, and
to be punished if you misconduct yourself. Here
you will learn what discipline is. Silence!" Lily
had no more idea of uttering a word than of
dancing a gavotte, or setting the house on fire.
"The first lesson you are to learn must be to
hold your tongue."

"This is the last time," she pursued, "that I
shall speak to you in English. You had better
forget that I ever addressed you in that tongue.
I shall address you in French when I think you
have been long enough here to comprehend me,
and if you do not understand, you will be punished.
What do you know? I mean, what have you
learned away there in England?"

With much blushing and faltering, Lily went
over the scant schedule of her book-learning.
Mademoiselle Marcassin heard her in
contemptuous silence.

"As ignorant as a squirrel," she resumed, when
the child had done, "and, I dare say, quite
as restless and troublesome. Here you will be
taught as well as tamed. We cannot begin too
soon."

She rang a bell, and in a few minutes passed
by Lily in something closely approximating to
breathless terror—a low tap came to the door,
and a lady, who looked, as to garb and demeanour
gold cross and all, a duplicate edition of
Mademoiselle Marcassin, only she was somewhat
younger, shorter, and stouter, came into the room.