Don't you know your business!"
"Pardonnez, moi," returned Victor, speaking in his mother tongue,
and bowing low to the indignant child, whom he helped to a seat by
Richard.
An hour's drive brought them to the gate of Collingwood, and Edith
was certainly pardonable if she did cast a glance of exultation in
the direction of Brier Hill, as they wound up the gravelled road
and through the handsome grounds of what henceforth was to be her
home.
"I guess Mrs. Atherton will be sorry she acted so," she thought,
and she was even revolving the expediency of putting on airs and
not speaking to her former mistress, when the carriage stopped and
Victor appeared at the window all attention, and asking if he
should "assist Miss Hastings to alight."
In the door Mrs. Matson was waiting to receive them, rubbing her
gold-bowed spectacles and stroking her heavy silk with an air
which would have awed a child less self-assured than Edith.
Nothing grand or elegant seemed strange or new to her. On the
contrary she took to it naturally as if it were her native
clement, and now as she stepped upon the marble floor of the lofty
hall she involuntarily cut a pirouette, exclaiming, "Oh, but isn't
this jolly! Seems as if I'd got back to Heaven.
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