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Zella Sees Herself (1915)

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      PROLOGUE

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      THE French window of the dining-room at Villetswood stood wide open, disclosing a glittering perspective of white cloth laden with silver and flowers and gilt candlesticks crowned by pink shades.

      Gisèle de Kervoyou, aged seven, balanced herself on one foot upon the threshold of the window.

      She was gazing eagerly at the beautiful, gleaming vista, repeated in the great mirror at the far end of the room. With a gesture that was essentially un-English, the child shrugged her shoulders together, stepped very daintily into the dining-room, and approached the table. Her dark grey eyes were narrowed together, her head thrown back as though to catch any possible sound, and she moved as gracefully and as soundlessly as a kitten.

      With tiny dexterous fingers she abstracted some three or four chocolate bon-bons from as many little silver dessert-dishes, thrust one into her mouth, and the others into the diminutive pocket of her white frock. Then for the first time she looked guilty, flung a terrified glance round her, and fled noiselessly across the room and out into the garden again.

      "Zella! aren't you coming?"

      "Yes, yes."

      Zella ran across the terrace to the big oak-tree where her cousins, James and Muriel Lloyd-Evans, wore earnestly engaged in digging a passage through the earth to Australia

      "Where have you been?" Muriel inquired.

      "On to the top terrace," said Zella glibly; "and I saw a big white horse, trampling on all the flowers."

      "Where, where?" shrieked Muriel, flinging down her spade. James, a quiet little boy who bore unmoved the reputation of being a prig, looked up inquiringly.

      "It's gone now," said Zella. "Papa shot it."

      "Shot it dead?" said Muriel, awestruck.

      "I don't believe it," remarked James, and resumed his digging.

      Zella felt a wave of fury pass over her at this insult. It made her so angry to be disbelieved that she completely lost sight of the entire justification for James' attitude.

      "It is true," she cried passionately; "I did see it!" And across her mental vision there passed a very distinct picture of a mammoth white horse destroying the geraniums with plunging hooves, and then suddenly stilled for ever by a gun-shot.

      Muriel, who hated quarrels,

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