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By Root 442 0

gone mad the child’s grandmother had brought her up. Adrienne had been allowed no say whatever in little Clemmie’s upbringing. She had even had to fight with her husband and mother-in-law to be allowed to nurse her when she had measles. The girl had been ill for an unusually long time and when some months had passed Adrienne had come to believe that in reality the little girl did love her mother but had been made to hide her affection because of the iron will of old Countess Clémence. She had been mistaken. When Pal Uzdy finally had had to be removed to the madhouse the emotional shock had completely broken the old lady who stayed in her own room, as motionless as a living statue, staring with unseeing eyes straight ahead of her and hardly ever speaking let alone taking any interest in whatever happened around her. She had withdrawn into herself and everyone else had been kept at a distance; not only Adrienne, whom she had always hated, but also her grandchild whom she was thought to have loved. When the child had been brought in to see her, she had just gestured for them to take her out again, and it had then been clear to Adrienne that Clemmie must be removed from Almasko as soon as possible. Two days later the French governess and English nanny had brought her to the Uzdy villa outside Kolozsvar.

Soon afterwards Countess Clémence also left Almasko. With Maier and her elderly maid she took off for her villa at Meran and had been there ever since. She never wrote and any news that Adrienne had of her came from the servants when they wrote to thank her for the monthly cheque that Adrienne sent them.

For the first time since her birth Adrienne’s daughter belonged solely to her mother.

For a little while Clemmie had been her only joy, for their coming together coincided with Adrienne’s second separation from Balint, a separation that she then believed was for ever. And so Adrienne lavished on the child all the love of which she was capable, for she felt that now there was no one else. She spent all her time with her, and tried hard to win her love.

She did not succeed.

From the moment that it was clear that the grandmother was no longer there all signs of love for her mother also vanished. Those little shows of affection that had so heartened Adrienne while Clemmie was recovering from measles were seen no more, and it was not long before Adrienne had realized with a pang that what she had taken as a growing love for her mother had been nothing more than the child’s desire to vex her grandmother.

Until Countess Clémence had left for Meran the little girl had always lived with her in the main house whenever the family had been in Kolozsvar. As soon as she had gone Adrienne moved her into Pal Uzdy’s rooms in the one-storey wing next to her own bedroom. They were large rooms filled with light and air, but though her mother soon fixed them up as a nursery suite filled with expensive dolls and other toys, Clemmie ignored them all and never played with them. The most beautiful, an engaging and tempting clown, had barely been glanced at as it sat under the Christmas tree and when finally it had been picked up and given to her, the child had solemnly offered her polite thanks – as she had with every other toy given to her – picked it up and placed it at once on the nursery shelves along with all the others: and there they had stayed, lined up in exact order. If they were picked up when the room was dusted and not replaced exactly in line as they had been Clemmie would at once pick them up and replace them carefully in their proper place. Otherwise she never touched them. They simply did not interest her.

However she did show interest in reading and so was given all the best children’s books that Adrienne could lay her hands on – the volumes of the Bibliothèque Rose, Alice in Wonderland, and many others. These too she would accept coolly and always thanked her mother with formal politeness, though never with any sign of joy or pleasure. Once a box of coloured pencils had somehow inadvertently got among the other presents and,