Before he could tell her any of them Mademoiselle came swiftly and let him out through the stable gate talking excitably and softly in French, which Felicia thought most unfair of her. It is not at all strange that she does not remember when her mother died. You see sometimes there were several days when her mother was too tired or too ill to see such a vigorous person as Felice must have been. She merely remembers that there came a time when she was no longer asked to tiptoe past the door on the second floor landing. But she does remember that the thin visaged old French woman wept one day when she asked her, "Shall we not go tell Maman I was happy today in the garden?" She remembers it because they were the first tears she had ever seen and she clapped her hands and said "How queer, Mademoiselle! There are little rains in your eyes." She did not ask to see her mother any more, for when she did Mademoiselle would answer "Not to-day." It was somehow a rather difficult time for them all; the Major was morose and sullen and Mademoiselle often had "little rains" in her eyes. She was not very patient with the lively young person who had grown tall enough to reach even the topmost drawer of the high walnut bureau. Felicia was exploring them thoroughly one rainy afternoon while Mademoiselle dozed by the nursery fireside. She found a beautiful box with an inlaid cover that was filled with all sorts of fascinating trinkets; earrings and breastpins and droll bracelets of tarnished silver set with jade and coral--queer little letters folded in triangles with gay red wax seals, addressed in French, most of them--a soft black lace shawl--Felicia was trailing about grandly when Mademoiselle awoke to rage and scold. The child was beginning to long for freedom, she was constantly questioning. Octavia's gentle raillery, Octavia's delicious half answers to the "Whys and wheres and whens and whats" had satisfied, but Mademoiselle's abrupt, "I can't tell you--" "It does not concern you--" "Zat is not of consequence--" were teaching the child to scheme. She was perpetually trying to find out for herself the things that Mademoiselle declined to tell her. She was especially curious about Maman's closed door. Mademoiselle refused to open it. But there came a day, when Mademoiselle wasn't looking, when Felice tapped gently at her mother's door and opened it and went in. And when she saw the empty bed and the empty chair she ran in great glee to her grandfather. "Oh, Oh," she cried, "Why didn't you tell me that Maman had gone to the House in the Woods? Why didn't you let me go with her? For she said we would make the garden together!" He did not answer her at once. "How did you know?"