Mary played a good deal in her desultory manner, now that she had the
drawing-room all to herself, and no fear of Lady Maulevrier's critical
ear or Lesbia's superior smile. The Fraeulein was pleased to hear her
pupil ramble on with her favourite bits from Raff, and Hensel, and
Schubert, and Mendelssohn, and Mozart, and was very well content to let
her play just what she liked, and to escape the trouble of training her
to that exquisite perfection into which Lady Lesbia had been drilled.
Lesbia was not a genius, and the training process had been quite as hard
for the governess as for the pupil.
Thus the slow days wore on till the first week in March, and on one
bleak bitter afternoon, when Fraeulein Mueller stuck to the oven even a
little closer than usual, Mary felt she must go out, in the face of the
east wind, which was tossing the leafless branches in the valley below
until the trees looked like an angry crowd, hurling its arms in the air,
fighting, struggling, writhing. She must leave that dreary house for a
little while, were it even to be lashed and bruised and broken by that
fierce wind.
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