see--that must be eight years ago, as I was nine then; I hardly
remembered him.

Godmamma was waiting for us in the hall when we arrived. Château de
Croixmare is a nice place, but I _am_ glad I am not French. It was the
hottest night of the year almost, and not a breath of air in the house,
every shutter closed and the curtains drawn. Héloise had gone to bed
with a _migraine_, Godmamma explained, but Victorine was there. She has
grown up plain, and looks much more than five years older than me. They
weren't in evening dress, or even tea-gowns like in England--it did
seem strange.

Mme. de Croixmare looks a dragon! I can't think how poor papa insisted
upon my having such a godmother. Her face is quite white, and her hair
so black and drawn off her forehead, and she has a bristly moustache.
She is also very up right and thin, and walks with an ebony stick, and
her voice is like a peacock's. She looked me through and through, and I
felt all my French getting jumbled, and it came out with such an
English accent; and after we had bowed a good deal, and said heaps of
Ollendorfish kind of sentences, I was given some "sirop" and water, and
conducted to bed by Victorine. She is a big dump with a shiny
complexion, and such a very small mouth, and I am sure I shall hate
her, she isn't a bit good-natured-looking like Jean. The house is
really fine Louis XV., and my bedroom and cabinet de toilette are
delicious, so is my bed; but the attitude of Agnès--such a conscious
pride in the superiority of France--nearly drove me mad.

There isn't a decent dressing-table mirror, only one in an old silver
frame about eight inches square, and that is sitting on the
writing-table--or what would be the writing-table, if there happened to