correspond quite naturally with her bleached and sallow skin, her hollow
jaws, and the fine but grim wrinkles traced about her brows and eyelids.
She smiled, she nodded, and then for a good while she scanned me in silence
with a steady cunning eye, and a stern smile.

'And how is she named--what is Mademoiselle's name?' said the tall
stranger.

'_Maud_, Madame.'

'Maud!--what pretty name! Eh bien! I am very sure my dear Maud she will
be very good little girl--is not so?--and I am sure I shall love you vary
moche. And what 'av you been learning, Maud, my dear cheaile--music,
French, German, eh?'

'Yes, a little; and I had just begun the use of the globes when my
governess went away.'

I nodded towards the globes, which stood near her, as I said this.

'Oh! yes--the globes;' and she spun one of them with her great hand. 'Je
vous expliquerai tout cela à fond.'

Madame de la Rougierre, I found, was always quite ready to explain
everything 'à fond;' but somehow her 'explications,' as she termed them,
were not very intelligible, and when pressed her temper woke up; so that I
preferred, after a while, accepting the expositions just as they came.

Madame was on an unusually large scale, a circumstance which made some of
her traits more startling, and altogether rendered her, in her strange way,