Little Janey had no restraints of politeness upon her. She pulled at the end of his eccentric old tartan shawl. “C’est parce que vous êtes si méchant,” she cried. “C’est parce que you are a fright--a horrible, nasty, old man. I hate you too,” cried Janey--“vous êtes méchant, méchant! Personne vous aime; vous êtes an old, old, wicked! a horror! a fright! all wrapped in a shawl like an old vieille fille; nobody loves you--they all hate you,” she cried. M. Goudron was dismayed by this sudden attack: he had a weakness--he loved children. He cried in a querulous tone, “Petite, vous n’en savez rien,” loudly, as if defying the world. At the window up-stairs Blanchette and Ursule were secretly kissing the tips of their fingers, waving anxious salutations to the departing ladies of the _château_. As for Helen, she held her dress close to her, not to touch him as she brushed past into her own room. She was not so outspoken as Janey, neither did she think, like her father, that these extraordinary antipathies and political extravagances were fictitious like the politics of a _vaudeville_. But the horror was evanescent, and how delightful was the reflection that she had found a pair of friends! CHAPTER X. After this a new life began for Helen. Cécile and Thérèse de Vieux-bois were much more highly educated than she was; they were far more fluent in conversation; they knew a great deal more than Helen. She, poor, solitary child, in her luxurious rural palace, had read nothing but novels; whereas they had read scarcely any novels at all, but a great many better things, and still continued their studies with a conscientiousness and energy at which she gazed with wonder. Nothing could have been more different from their carefully guarded and sedulously instructed life than the secluded existence of the millionaire’s daughter, broken sometimes by the noisy brilliancy of a great dinner-party, at which, perhaps, she and her governess were the only ladies present, or by the arrival of the huge box of light literature which her father substituted when she was seventeen for the cakes and toys, and dainties of all kinds, with which he had overwhelmed her at an earlier age. This was Mr Goulburn’s idea of what was best for girls--cakes and sweetmeats, then novels, with as many balls and amusements as could be procured. He had intended that Helen should be fully supplied with these later pleasures; but he had not succeeded, as has been said, in introducing her to the county, and all his plans for town had been mysteriously cut short.