“Come and sit down, Dolly. We’ll have some lemonade. Alberic, will you bring it?”

“Lemonade!” I cried. “I should love some. I know French people love it. I remember how people used to sell it in the streets of Paris before…”

“Before everything went wrong.”

Jeanne said: “I have some little cakes. English cakes to go with the French lemonade.”

She left us then and I said: “Well, Aunt Sophie, you’ve worked a miracle with this house.”

“I am so glad I found it. It has made such a difference. I have my independence now. Jeanne and I appreciate that.”

“I understand.”

“And I have my friends.” She touched Dolly’s arm and the girl smiled shyly. “We are teaching Dolly French and Alberic English. It is amusing.”

That Aunt Sophie should find anything amusing was in itself miraculous, and I had a notion that Dolly and Alberic were doing as much good for her as she was for them.

Alberic came in with the lemonade.

“As we have a visitor today,” said Sophie, “there will be no lesson.”

“It is very pleasant for Mademoiselle to have a visitor,” said Alberic in halting English.

“Very good,” said Aunt Sophie. She spoke in French telling him to pour out the lemonade. “Dolly, hand round the cakes.”

Dolly rose with alacrity, a smile of pleasure on her face.

“They are very good today,” said Sophie as she bit into one of them. “They must have known we were going to have the honour of a visit from Eversleigh.”

I told her that I should be delighted to come whenever she asked me.

She nodded and enquired after my mother’s health.

“She is very well, thanks, and getting very near her time.”

“August, is it? Poor Lottie, she is a little old.”

“She doesn’t consider herself ‘poor,’” I said quickly.

“No, of course not. She always had… everything. I suppose there is a great fuss going on.”

“About the baby, you mean. The midwife is already there. It’s a little soon, but Dickon insisted. He is really quite nervous. I have never seen him like that before.”

Perhaps I should not have stressed his devotion to my mother; it was one of those aspects which Sophie found it hard to accept. I sometimes believed that she would like some misfortune to come to my mother. The thought so horrified me that I disliked Aunt Sophie in that moment. Why could she not accept her misfortune? Why did she allow her resentment to make her so bitter?

But who was I to criticize others? I was sure I was going through my life with the knowledge that my own sin was far greater than those I was condemning in others.

“An August baby,” said Aunt Sophie. “And yours is to be September. Imagine two babies in a nursery which must have been empty for so long.”

“That is how it is with nurseries,” I said.

“It makes it easier to have the two so close together,” remarked Jeanne practically. “They will be companions for each other.”

“That’s what I think,” I said, smiling at Jeanne.

Alberic came over to bring me more lemonade, which was cool and delicious, and after a little while I said I would be leaving as I seemed to want a great deal of rest nowadays.

“It’s wise to do as your body bids you,” commented Jeanne. “If you feel tired, that means you need rest.”

I smiled appreciatively at Jeanne. She was so reasonable and seemed to bring a breath of sanity into any situation.

“Before you go, would you like to look round the house?” she asked. “We have made alterations. Or do you feel too tired?”

“I’d like to see them. I’ve always been fascinated by this house.”

“I will show Madame Frenshaw round,” said Jeanne; and I kissed Aunt Sophie and said goodbye to her, Dolly and Alberic.

As we went out I heard Aunt Sophie say: “Now, my dears, we can proceed with our lesson. You begin, Dolly. You must talk more in company. There’s no need to be shy, you know.”

Jeanne smiled at me as she shut the door.

“It gives her great pleasure,” she said. “They are a pleasant pair. Little Dolly is a mouse. Alberic, he can roar like a lion. They amuse her, and they are coming along with their talking. Dolly is quite good but there is a shyness she must overcome. Alberic… he is not so afflicted.”

“It’s wonderful that she has found this interest.”

“That and the house. She needs to be interested. It is what I have always wanted for her.”

“You have been wonderful, Jeanne. You know how we appreciate you.”

“We owe so much to Monsieur Jonathan. He brought us out of France. We could not have long survived. We shall never forget.”

“It is the sort of adventure which he does very well,” I said shortly.

“He is like his father, who has been the good husband to Madame Lottie.”

“Yes,” I said. “Oh, I see you have the curtains up in the gallery.”

“It was so bare without them. They were such good curtains. Mademoiselle d’Aubigné would have had new ones but I saw that a good cleaning and a little stitch here and there, and they would be as good as new.”

“Always practical,” I said. “And they certainly look magnificent. They’ve restored that look to the gallery. That mystery. To think that it all comes from curtains!”

“Shall we start at the top and work down?”

“Excellent,” I replied.

We climbed the stairs.

“You do not find them too much?” she asked.

“Not if I pause here and there. I’m really very well… just weighty.”

“I understand. And what joy for you when this little one comes.”

“Oh yes, I long for it.”

We were passing the room. The door was shut. I would steel myself to look at it later.

We went up the stairs to the next floor.

“You will see that we have done much,” said Jeanne. “But there is still much to do.”

“It is miraculous.”

“I do not wish to finish too soon.”

“You like to keep the interest going for Mademoiselle d’Aubigné.”

Jeanne nodded. “There are many discussions and we discover what can be done about this and that. It adds a great excitement.”

“Of course.”

“You see we have new curtains in some places… but in many we have used those which were already here. And much of the furniture too. We have done rather well—with what your mother has given us from Eversleigh.”

“Indeed you have.”

We were down to the first floor. She showed me the big bedroom with the four-poster bed in it, which Sophie had taken for hers when they had first come to the house.

“She no longer sleeps in this room. She has moved and I have the room next to her. If she wants me in the night she has only to knock on the wall. I have given her a brass poker. It rests by her bed.”

“Does she need you in the night? She’s not ill, is she?”

“Oh no, no. It is just in case. She is nervous since the trouble started. While we were in France we never knew from one night to the next whether someone would be coming for us. I always had my bed in her room then, so I was within call. She is nervous if I am not at hand, so I thought of the poker.”

“Dear Jeanne, you think of everything. She has taken one of the other rooms then.”

“I will show you. Come.”

She led me along the corridor. I felt a little faint, for she had opened the door to that room which was so well known to me. I saw the bed with the blue velvet curtains—now cleaned and seeming a brighter shade of blue. I looked at the court cupboard, now polished and shining.

“So,” I said faintly, “this is now her bedroom.”

Jeanne nodded. “And mine is next to it. We made a discovery here… such an interesting one.”

“Oh?”

“Come. Look here… by the door. It is very cleverly done. You can hardly see it.”

“What is it?”

“A hole in the floor… right against the wall. Do you see it?”

“Oh… yes.”

“It’s the end of a tube. A kind of speaking tube.”

My heart began to beat wildly.

“Are you all right, Madame?” asked Jeanne.

I put my hand to my stomach. “It was—just a flutter.”

“Sit down on the bed. You are overtired, I think. You must go back in the carriage.”

“Oh, no. I’m perfectly all right. Tell me about this speaking tube.”

“It is cleverly constructed. When I first noticed it I had a vague notion that I had seen something like it before. I put my hand to the hole and shouted down it. I could not hear my voice, but I knew that it was coming out in another part of the house. We were immediately over the kitchens, so it seemed likely that the other end of the tube was in the kitchens. Someone must have had it put in when the house was built… perhaps someone who wanted to send messages from the bedroom down to the kitchens.”

“It’s ingenious,” I stammered.

“Are you sure you feel all right?”

“Quite sure. Do go on about the tube.”

“Dolly was here at the time. I made her shout through the tube and I went down to the kitchens. I heard her voice and discovered exactly where it was coming from. I was soon about to find what I sought. A cupboard has been built round it. But there it was. What an amazing discovery! When I told Mademoiselle about it she wanted to move into this room. She said that if I was in the kitchens she could talk to me from the bedroom. I can see you think I have exaggerated, Madame. Allow me to go to the kitchens. I will speak to you through the tube.”

I sat there on the bed and in due course the voice came up to me.

“Mrs. Frenshaw. You can hear me, I believe.”

It was all coming back: the memory of my abandonment on this very bed, the voice through the tube. It did not sound like Jeanne’s voice exactly; it was muted, hollow, in the way that other voice had been.