Mrs. Temperly or whether Mrs. Temperly tried
to copy her. Presently she said, slowly rubbing her hands and smiling at
him:

'You will have plenty of time. We shall be long in Paris.'

'Perhaps you will be disappointed,' Raymond suggested.

'How can we be--unless _you_ disappoint us?' asked the governess,
sweetly.

He left her without ceremony: the imitation was probably on the part of
Cousin Maria.

III

'Only just ourselves,' her note had said; and he arrived, in his natural
impatience, a few moments before the hour. He remembered his Cousin
Maria's habitual punctuality, but when he entered the splendid _salon_
in the quarter of the Parc Monceau--it was there that he had found her
established--he saw that he should have it, for a little, to himself.
This was pleasing, for he should be able to look round--there were
admirable things to look at. Even to-day Raymond Bestwick was not sure
that he had learned to paint, but he had no doubt of his judgment of the
work of others, and a single glance showed him that Mrs. Temperly had
'known enough' to select, for the adornment of her walls, half a dozen
immensely valuable specimens of contemporary French art. Her choice of
other objects had been equally enlightened, and he remembered what Dora
had said to him five years before--that her mother wished them to have
the best. Evidently, now they had got it; if five years was a long time
for him to have delayed (with his original plan of getting off so soon)
to come to Paris, it was a very short one for Cousin Maria to have taken
to arrive at the highest good.

Rather to his surprise the first person to come in was Effie, now so
complete a young lady, and such a very pretty girl, that he scarcely
would have known her. She was fair, she was graceful, she was lovely,
and as she entered the room, blushing and smiling, with a little
floating motion which suggested that she was in a liquid element, she
brushed down the ribbons of a delicate Parisian _toilette de jeune
fille_. She appeared to expect that he would be surprised, and as if to
justify herself for being the first she said, 'Mamma told me to come;
she knows you are here; she said I was not to wait.' More than once,
while they conversed, during the next few moments, before any one else
arrived, she repeated that she was acting by her mamma's directions.
Raymond perceived that she had not only the costume but several other of
the attributes of a _jeune fille_.