"Doesn't he!" agreed Lynette, with an ardent flush.
"And you're descended from some of the people he wrote about," pressed Greta. "Own it!"
There was a faint line of sarcasm about the lovely lips.
"Shakespeare wrote of clowns and churls as well as of Kings and noblemen."
"If you were a clown, you wouldn't be what you are. The very shape of your head, and ears, and nails, bespeaks a Princess, disguised as a finished head-pupil, going to take over a class of grubby-fingered little ones--pah!--next term. And don't we all know that an English Duchess sends you your Christmas and Easter and birthday gifts! Come, you might as well speak out, when this is my last term, and we have always been such dear friends, and always will be," coaxed Greta, "because the Duchess lets you out, you know!"
She said it so quaintly that Lynette laughed, though there was a pained contraction between the delicate eyebrows and a vexed and sorrowful shadow on her face. Greta went on:
"We have all of us always known that you were--a mystery. Has it got anything to do with the Duchess?"
The round, shallow blue eyes were too greedily curious to be pretty at the moment. Lynette met them with a full, grave, answering denial.
"No; I am nothing to the Duchess of Broads, or she to me. She is sister to the Mother-Superior, and she sends to me at Christmas and Easter, and on birthdays, by the Mother's wish. Doesn't the Mother's second sister, the Princesse de Dignmont-Veziers, send Katie"--Katie was a little Irish novice--"presents from Paris twice a year?"
Greta's pretty eyebrows went up. Her blue greedy eyes became circular with surprise.
"Yes, of course--out of charity, because Katie was a foundling, picked up in the Irish quarter in Cape Town."
Lynette went on steadily, but, looking out of the window at the great wistaria that climbed upon the angle of the Convent wing in which were the nuns' cells.
"If Katie was a foundling, I am nothing better."
"Lynette Mildare, you're never in earnest?"
The shocked tone and the scandalised disgust on Greta's pretty face stung and hurt. But Lynette went on:
"I speak the truth. The Mother and the Sisters, who have always known it, have kept the secret. In their great considerate kindness, they have never once let me feel there was any difference between me and the other girls--not once in all these years. And I can never thank them enough--never be grateful enough for their great goodness--especially _hers_." The steady voice shook a little.