I've a
friend who has been twice with her father. She told me so much about the
Riviera. It can't be much farther than the other way."
So it was settled, after some perfunctory objections on the part of Mrs.
Home-Davis, who wished it put on record that she had been overruled by
Mary's obstinacy. If undesirable incidents should happen, she wanted to
say, "Mary _would_ go by herself, without waiting for me. She's of age,
and I couldn't coerce her."
III
Mary felt like an escaped prisoner as the train began to move out of
Victoria Station--the train which was taking her toward France and
Italy. It was like passing through a great gray gate, labeled "This way
to warmth and sunshine and beauty." Already, though the gate itself was
not beautiful, Mary seemed to see through it, far ahead, vistas of
lovely places to which it opened. She sat calmly, as the moving carriage
rescued her from Aunt Sara and Elinor on the platform, but her hands
were locked tightly inside the five-year-old squirrel muff, which would
have been given away, with everything of hers, if Sister Rose had not
changed a certain decision at the eleventh hour. She was quivering with
excitement and the wild sense of freedom which she had not tasted in
London.
In leaving the convent she had not felt this sense of escaping, for the
convent had been "home," the goodbyes had drowned her in grief, and she
had often before driven off with Lady MacMillan, in the springy barouche
behind the fat horses.
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