"I thought I should never get you! How you have grown and—yes—improved. You were no beauty as a child, but you give promise of it now—a little too rosy perhaps for good breeding, but it is your outdoor country life. And how are the brothers? As inseparable as ever? Now come and sit down. Pierre, we will have tea; tell Louis and Gaston to take Mademoiselle's luggage to her room." The last sentence was said in French. Adrienne glanced around her. It was a long, narrow salon furnished mainly in Louis Quatorze style; the floor was polished till it shone like a mirror, but dust lay on pictures and ornaments, and the decoration of the room was very shabby. There was a bright wood fire burning, and Adrienne was glad of it, for the room seemed to her damp and unused. She discovered later that her aunt never sat in it when she was alone. The Countess motioned to her to sit down upon a faded blue satin couch; and if Adrienne's bright young eyes were taking in her environment, her aunt's sharp eyes were taking in her niece. In her neat dark blue travelling suit, with her blue velvet hat pushed well down on her shapely little head, Adrienne would have passed muster in Paris. Tired she was, but not so tired that she could not talk very pleasantly to her aunt till the tea arrived. A small silver tray with a very big silver teapot and fragile china cups was placed on a little table in front of her aunt. A few sweet biscuits on a plate was the accompaniment to the tea, which Adrienne found weak and tasteless. But it was hot, and Pierre served it, as if it were the choicest champagne. The Countess asked her numberless questions about herself and her uncles, and then suddenly she pushed away her cup of tea from her, and produced her handkerchief. Burying her face in it, she began to sob: "Oh, I am miserable, lonely, forlorn! Since my child has left me so heartlessly, I have suffered terribly. No one in the neighbourhood to understand or comfort me. My brothers and you refusing to come to me! And this great big old house going to pieces, and the winter with the rain and snow and darkness, and poor little me sitting up waiting, waiting for life to smile on me again, and always waiting in vain." "Poor Aunt Cecily," said Adrienne softly. "If I were you, I would sell this old Château, and come to England and be happy in a charming little English cottage near your friends and relations. Why should you live in a foreign country away from us all?" The Countess put down her handkerchief, and her eyes sparkled with an angry light in them: "English cottage! Me, at my age, in my position! You ignorant, foolish girl, do you think for a moment that I would leave my husband's home and property? Do you think, after forty years of French life and Parisian society, I could settle down in an English village, with its mud, and dull stolid unsociability?"