Here a tear stole from the faded eyes that had looked on such triumphs.
“It is true, my dear, you never had such an opportunity again. Your cousin went back to France—and—and—there were no more fêtes after those days, and there was no one left to recognize your talent. Perhaps it was as much the lack of recognition as anything else. Yes, I say, as I always have said, that it’s recognition you need to make you famous. It’s the same with your birds as with your singing. It’s recognition you need.”
“And perhaps it’s wealth too, mama,” said Mam’selle Diane gently. “One is forgotten when one is poor. Why, we have been as good as dead and buried these twenty years. I believe there’s no one left who remembers us.”
“No, no, my child; it’s not that,” cried the old lady sharply. “We are always d’Hautreves. It was our own choice to give up society; and we live so far away, it is inconvenient,—so few of our old friends keep carriages now; and besides, we have no day to receive. It was a mistake giving up our reception-day; since then people haven’t visited us.”
“I was thinking, mama,” said Mam’selle Diane timidly, “that if I did as well with my ducks next year as I have this, we might have a ‘day’ again. We might send cards, and let our old friends know that we are still alive.”
“We might, we might,” said the old lady, brightening visibly. “We are always d’Hautreves”; then her face fell suddenly. “But, Diane, my dear, we haven’t either of us a silk dress, and it would never do for us to receive in anything but silk.”
“That’s true, mama. I never thought of that. We may not be able to have a ‘day,’ after all,” and Mam’selle Diane bent her head dejectedly over her sealing-wax and wool.
While these reminiscences were exchanged by the mother and daughter, Lady Jane, whose singing had called them forth, slipped out into the small garden, where, amid a profusion of bloom and fragrance, she was now listening to the warbling of a canary whose cage hung among the branches of a Maréchal Niel rose. It was the bird whose melody had enraptured her, while she was yet without the paradise, and it was the effigy of that same bird that she had seen on Mam’selle Diane’s green woolen trees. He was a bright, jolly little fellow, and he sang as if he were wound up and never would run down.
Lady Jane listened to him delightedly while she inspected the beds of flowers. It was a little place, but contained a great variety of plants, and each was carefully trained and trimmed; and under all the seedlings were laid little sheets of white paper on which some seeds had already fallen.
Lady Jane eyed the papers curiously. She did not know that these tiny black seeds added yearly a few dollars to the d’Hautreve revenues, and, at the same time, furnished the thrifty gardener with all she needed for her own use. But whose hands pruned and trained, dug and watered? Were they the hands of the myth of a servant who came so early before madame was out of her bed—for the old aristocrat loved to sleep late—to clean the gallery and banquette and do other odd jobs unbecoming a d’Hautreve?