“I was thinking of it when I saw you,” said Helen. “Little Janey said the snow was like a great white cake--like the cake we had on Twelfth Night, and that made me think. I thought I saw the room all dressed with holly--we do that in England at Christmas; and all the children from all the parish--they came from miles round--and the great huge cake. The children all came and curtseyed to us when they had their slice of cake, and stared at Janey. She looked like a little fairy princess,” said Helen, with a smile and a sigh. Her new acquaintance looked at her very closely, then gave a glance at the child, who was very simply dressed, not like a princess at all. “The people loved you very much?” said Cécile; “they do so in England; they do not hate you as aristocrats. I shall be very glad of that. Why should they hate us in France? We try to do what good we can, but there is always suspicion. They think we have no right to differ from them. But how can we help it? It is so, it is not our doing. They have not that feeling in England. They loved you, the people? Oh, how happy I shall be!” “They were always very nice,” said Helen. “Loved--I don’t know that they loved us. We do not say that word in England except when--except when it is very strong indeed;--but they were always very nice. Though Miss Temple used to say papa was too good--a great deal too liberal, giving them too much--almost everything they wanted.” “Miss Temple was----?” “My governess,” said Helen--“my very dear friend; she went away from me and married. I never had a mother, nor Janey either,” she said, in a low tone. “But it was very good, very kind of monsieur your father to be so good to the poor.” “I thought so too; but Miss Temple said it was wrong to give so much,” said Helen, simply. She did not understand the wonder that was rising in the mind of her new acquaintance. What Helen innocently revealed seemed to Cécile the condition of a grand seigneur in the old days when a grand seigneur was a prince in rural France. And it was very extraordinary to think of a great English nobleman or gentleman--words of which she partially understood the meaning--living in Latour! She looked at Helen again, examining her very closely; and Cécile knew that her dress, which was the dress she had brought from Fareham, was costly and fine, though so simple. They had wondered, gazed at the English family in church, and wherever they met them. But it was still more extraordinary now. The only thing was that they were English. That accounts for so much! for every kind of eccentricity, Cécile thought.