'_Maud_, Madame.'
'Maud!--what pretty name! Eh bien! I am very sure my dear Maud she will
be very good little girl--is not so?--and I am sure I shall love you vary
moche. And what 'av you been learning, Maud, my dear cheaile--music,
French, German, eh?'
'Yes, a little; and I had just begun the use of the globes when my
governess went away.'
I nodded towards the globes, which stood near her, as I said this.
'Oh! yes--the globes;' and she spun one of them with her great hand. 'Je
vous expliquerai tout cela a fond.'
Madame de la Rougierre, I found, was always quite ready to explain
everything 'a fond;' but somehow her 'explications,' as she termed them,
were not very intelligible, and when pressed her temper woke up; so that I
preferred, after a while, accepting the expositions just as they came.
Madame was on an unusually large scale, a circumstance which made some of
her traits more startling, and altogether rendered her, in her strange way,
more awful in the eyes of a nervous _child,_ I may say, such as I was. She
used to look at me for a long time sometimes, with the peculiar smile
I have mentioned, and a great finger upon her lip, like the Eleusinian
priestess on the vase.
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