But Nouna had flown out of the room, and she was haranguing only Lauriston, who had risen obediently at the young girl’s imperious gesture, but did not like to leave the elder lady alone so unceremoniously. “She is a wilful little thing,” he said smiling. “Oh, Mr. Lauriston, what we English people call wilfulness is lamb-like docility compared to that girl’s! She’s like an eel, like quicksilver, like a will-o’-the-wisp.” “Or a sunbeam,” suggested he. “Ah, of course, you’re a young man, you think her charming; and so, I believe, at the bottom of my heart, do I. But give me a good, sensible, solid, matter-of-fact English girl to look after, rather than this creature who is shaking with passion one moment, flashing her teeth, stamping her foot; and the next suffocating you, and crushing up your bonnet with kisses. As if kisses could cure the headaches her wild fits give me, or as if you could squeeze resentment out of a person, as you do water out of a sponge!” “Has she been in your charge long?” “Ever since she left school, six months ago,” said Mrs. Ellis with a sigh. “Her mother, one of the kindest and most charming women I have ever met, with all the high-bred ease that nothing will give to Nouna, wished her to have finishing lessons in music and dancing and languages in London. Music!” ejaculated the poor lady in a contemptuous manner. “Nothing would ever induce her to learn the piano, as every well-educated English girl should do. At school, after her first lesson, she crept down stairs at night, and undid all the strings of the instrument; so that had to be given up. I believe she wanted to learn the tom-tom, or some hideous Indian thing with jam-pot covers at each end, and they had to compromise by teaching her the harp and the guitar. Then languages! They only managed to get her to study French by telling her it was one of the dialects of India. As to dancing, that came to her like magic, from a waltz to a kind of wild dance of her own, more like the leaps and bounds of a young animal than the decorous movements of a young lady! I dare not think what the Countess would say if she could see her.” “Why doesn’t she live with her mother, then, who would surely have more influence over her than any one?” “You must not blame the Countess,” said Mrs. Ellis, as if he had been guilty of blasphemy. “A more loving mother never lived. You should read the beautiful letters she writes to her daughter. But she has married again; and her husband, the Conde di Valdestillas, a Spanish nobleman much older than herself, is a great invalid, and she is obliged to travel about with him wherever he fancies to go.” “But surely the daughter ought to be considered as well as the husband.”