"Who is that?" she inquired.

Mary Lyster, with a sharp sense of interruption, replied that she
believed the lady in question was the Grosville's French governess. But
in the very midst of her sentence Kitty deserted her, left her standing
in the centre of the drawing-room, while the deserter fled across it,
and sinking down beside the astonished mademoiselle took the
Frenchwoman's hand by assault and held it in both her own.

"Vous parlez Français?--vous êtes Française? Ah! ça me fait tant de
bien! Voyons! voyons!--causons un peu!"

And bending forward, she broke into a cataract of French, all the
elements of her strange, small beauty rushing, as it were, into flame
and movement at the swift sound and cadence of the words, like a dancer
kindled by music. The occasion was of the slightest; the Frenchwoman
might well show a natural bewilderment. But into the slight occasion the
girl threw an animation, a passion, that glorified it. It was like the
leap of a wild rain-stream on the mountains, that pours into the first
channel which presents itself.

"What beautiful French!" said Lady Edith, softly, to Mary Lyster, who
had found a seat beside her.

Mary Lyster smiled.

"She has been at school, of course, in a French convent." Somehow the
tone implied that the explanation disposed of all merit in the
performance.