for? It is possible that the atmosphere may have something to do with
it."

Here was fresh food for wonder, and for such serious thought as my age
admitted of. I was to be sent to a school in France! I could not make up
my mind whether to be sorry or glad. In truth, I was neither wholly the
one nor the other; the tangled web of my feelings was something
altogether beyond my skill to unravel.

Lady Chillington sipped her wine absently awhile; Sister Agnes was busy
with some fine needlework; and I was striving to elaborate a giant and
his attendant dwarf out of the glowing embers and cavernous recesses of
the wood fire, while there was yet an underlying vein of thought at work
in my mind which busied itself desultorily with trying to piece together
all that I had ever heard or read of life in a French school.

"You can run away now, little girl. You are de trop," said her ladyship,
turning on me in her abrupt fashion. "And you, Agnes, may as well read
to me a couple of chapters out of the 'Girondins.' What a wonderful man
was that Robespierre! What a giant! Had he but lived, how different the
history of Europe would have been from what we know it to-day."

I could almost have kissed her ladyship of my own accord, so pleased was
I to get away. I made my curtsey to her, and also to Sister Agnes, whose
only reply was a sweet, sad smile, and managed to preserve my dignity
till I was out of the room. But when the door was safely closed behind
me, I ran, I flew along the passages till I reached the housekeeper's
room. Dance was not there, neither had candles yet been lighted. The
bright moonlight pouring in through the window gave me a new idea.