'
Lucy subsided.
Albinia turned to Sophy. 'My dear,' she said, 'perhaps I pressed
this on when you were not prepared for it, but I have always been
used to think of it as a duty.'
Sophy made no answer, but her moody attitude relaxed, and Albinia
took comfort in the hope that she might have been gracious if she had
known how to set about it.
'I suppose Miss Belmarche is a Roman Catholic,' she said, wishing to
account for this wonderful ignorance, and addressing herself to
Sophy; but Lucy, whom she thought she had effectually put down, was
up again in a moment like a Jack-in-a-box.
'O yes, but not Genevieve. Her papa made it his desire that she
should be brought up a Protestant. Wasn't it funny? You know
Genevieve is Madame Belmarche's grand-daughter, and Mr. Durant was a
dancing-master.'
'Madame Belmarche's father and brother were guillotined,' continued
Sophy.
'Ah! then she is an emigrant?'
'Yes. Miss Belmarche has always kept school here. Our own mamma,
and Aunt Maria went to school to her, and Miss Celeste Belmarche
married Mr. Durant, a dancing-master--she was French teacher in a
school in London where he taught, and Madame Belmarche did not
approve, for she and her husband were something very grand in France,
so they waited and waited ever so long, and when at last they did
marry, they were quite old, and she died very soon; and they say he
never was happy again, and pined away till he really did die of
grief, and so Genevieve came to her grandmamma to be brought up.
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