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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Four Meetings, by Henry James
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Four Meetings
+
+Author: Henry James
+
+Release Date: June 8, 2007 [eBook #21773]
+[Most recently updated: April 15, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR MEETINGS ***
+
+
+
+
+FOUR MEETINGS
+
+By Henry James
+
+1885
+
+
+I saw her only four times, but I remember them vividly; she made an
+impression upon me. I thought her very pretty and very interesting,--a
+charming specimen of a type. I am very sorry to hear of her death; and
+yet, when I think of it, why should I be sorry? The last time I saw her
+she was certainly not--But I will describe all our meetings in order.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+The first one took place in the country, at a little tea-party, one
+snowy night. It must have been some seventeen years ago. My friend
+Latouche, going to spend Christmas with his mother, had persuaded me to
+go with him, and the good lady had given in our honor the entertainment
+of which I speak. To me it was really entertaining; I had never been in
+the depths of New England at that season. It had been snowing all day,
+and the drifts were knee-high. I wondered how the ladies had made their
+way to the house; but I perceived that at Grimwinter a conversazione
+offering the attraction of two gentlemen from New York was felt to be
+worth an effort.
+
+Mrs. Latouche, in the course of the evening, asked me if I “didn’t want
+to” show the photographs to some of the young ladies. The photographs
+were in a couple of great portfolios, and had been brought home by her
+son, who, like myself, was lately returned from Europe. I looked round
+and was struck with the fact that most of the young ladies were
+provided with an object of interest more absorbing than the most
+vivid sun-picture. But there was a person standing alone near the
+mantelshelf, and looking round the room with a small gentle smile which
+seemed at odds, somehow, with her isolation. I looked at her a moment,
+and then said, “I should like to show them to that young lady.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Latouche, “she is just the person. She doesn’t care
+for flirting; I will speak to her.”
+
+I rejoined that if she did not care for flirting, she was, perhaps,
+not just the person; but Mrs. Latouche had already gone to propose the
+photographs to her.
+
+“She’s delighted,” she said, coming back. “She is just the person, so
+quiet and so bright.” And then she told me the young lady was, by name,
+Miss Caroline Spencer, and with this she introduced me.
+
+Miss Caroline Spencer was not exactly a beauty, but she was a charming
+little figure. She must have been close upon thirty, but she was made
+almost like a little girl, and she had the complexion of a child. She
+had a very pretty head, and her hair was arranged as nearly as possible
+like the hair of a Greek bust, though indeed it was to be doubted if she
+had ever seen a Greek bust. She was “artistic,” I suspected, so far as
+Grimwinter allowed such tendencies. She had a soft, surprised eye, and
+thin lips, with very pretty teeth. Round her neck she wore what ladies
+call, I believe, a “ruche,” fastened with a very small pin in pink
+coral, and in her hand she carried a fan made of plaited straw and
+adorned with pink ribbon. She wore a scanty black silk dress. She spoke
+with a kind of soft precision, showing her white teeth between her
+narrow but tender-looking lips, and she seemed extremely pleased, even
+a little fluttered, at the prospect of my demonstrations. These went
+forward very smoothly, after I had moved the portfolios out of their
+corner and placed a couple of chairs near a lamp. The photographs were
+usually things I knew,--large views of Switzerland, Italy, and Spain,
+landscapes, copies of famous buildings, pictures, and statues. I said
+what I could about them, and my companion, looking at them as I
+held them up, sat perfectly still, with her straw fan raised to her
+underlip. Occasionally, as I laid one of the pictures down, she said
+very softly, “Have you seen that place?” I usually answered that I had
+seen it several times (I had been a great traveller), and then I felt
+that she looked at me askance for a moment with her pretty eyes. I had
+asked her at the outset whether she had been to Europe; to this she
+answered, “No, no, no,” in a little quick, confidential whisper. But
+after that, though she never took her eyes off the pictures, she said
+so little that I was afraid she was bored. Accordingly, after we had
+finished one portfolio, I offered, if she desired it, to desist. I felt
+that she was not bored, but her reticence puzzled me, and I wished to
+make her speak. I turned round to look at her, and saw that there was a
+faint flush in each of her cheeks. She was waving her little fan to
+and fro. Instead of looking at me she fixed her eyes upon the other
+portfolio, which was leaning against the table.
+
+“Won’t you show me that?” she asked, with a little tremor in her voice.
+I could almost have believed she was agitated.
+
+“With pleasure,” I answered, “if you are not tired.”
+
+“No, I am not tired,” she affirmed. “I like it--I love it.”
+
+And as I took up the other portfolio she laid her hand upon it, rubbing
+it softly.
+
+“And have you been here too?” she asked.
+
+On my opening the portfolio it appeared that I had been there. One of
+the first photographs was a large view of the Castle of Chillon, on the
+Lake of Geneva.
+
+“Here,” I said, “I have been many a time. Is it not beautiful?” And I
+pointed to the perfect reflection of the rugged rocks and pointed towers
+in the clear still water. She did not say, “Oh, enchanting!” and push it
+away to see the next picture. She looked awhile, and then she asked
+if it was not where Bonnivard, about whom Byron wrote, was confined. I
+assented, and tried to quote some of Byron’s verses, but in this attempt
+I succeeded imperfectly.
+
+She fanned herself a moment, and then repeated the lines correctly, in
+a soft, flat, and yet agreeable voice. By the time she had finished she
+was blushing. I complimented her and told her she was perfectly equipped
+for visiting Switzerland and Italy. She looked at me askance again, to
+see whether I was serious, and I added, that if she wished to recognize
+Byron’s descriptions she must go abroad speedily; Europe was getting
+sadly dis-Byronized.
+
+“How soon must I go?” she asked.
+
+“Oh, I will give you ten years.”
+
+“I think I can go within ten years,” she answered very soberly.
+
+“Well,” I said, “you will enjoy it immensely; you will find it very
+charming.” And just then I came upon a photograph of some nook in a
+foreign city which I had been very fond of, and which recalled tender
+memories. I discoursed (as I suppose) with a certain eloquence; my
+companion sat listening, breathless.
+
+“Have you been _very_ long in foreign lands?” she asked, some time after
+I had ceased.
+
+“Many years,” I said.
+
+“And have you travelled everywhere?”
+
+“I have travelled a great deal. I am very fond of it; and, happily, I
+have been able.”
+
+Again she gave me her sidelong gaze. “And do you know the foreign
+languages?”
+
+“After a fashion.”
+
+“Is it hard to speak them?”
+
+“I don’t believe you would find it hard,” I gallantly responded.
+
+“Oh, I shouldn’t want to speak; I should only want to listen,” she
+said. Then, after a pause, she added, “They say the French theatre is so
+beautiful.”
+
+“It is the best in the world.”
+
+“Did you go there very often?”
+
+“When I was first in Paris I went every night.”
+
+“Every night!” And she opened her clear eyes very wide. “That to me
+is:--” and she hesitated a moment--“is very wonderful.” A few minutes
+later she asked, “Which country do you prefer?”
+
+“There is one country I prefer to all others. I think you would do the
+same.”
+
+She looked at me a moment, and then she said softly, “Italy?”
+
+“Italy,” I answered softly, too; and for a moment we looked at each
+other. She looked as pretty as if, instead of showing her photographs, I
+had been making love to her. To increase the analogy, she glanced away,
+blushing. There was a silence, which she broke at last by saying,--
+
+“That is the place which, in particular, I thought of going to.”
+
+“Oh, that’s the place, that’s the place!” I said.
+
+She looked at two or three photographs in silence. “They say it is not
+so dear.”
+
+“As some other countries? Yes, that is not the least of its charms.”
+
+“But it is all very dear, is it not?”
+
+“Europe, you mean?”
+
+“Going there and travelling. That has been the trouble. I have very
+little money. I give lessons,” said Miss Spencer.
+
+“Of course one must have money,” I said, “but one can manage with a
+moderate amount.”
+
+“I think I should manage. I have laid something by, and I am always
+adding a little to it. It’s all for that.” She paused a moment, and then
+went on with a kind of suppressed eagerness, as if telling me the story
+were a rare, but a possibly impure satisfaction, “But it has not been
+only the money; it has been everything. Everything has been against it
+I have waited and waited. It has been a mere castle in the air. I am
+almost afraid to talk about it. Two or three times it has been a little
+nearer, and then I have talked about it and it has melted away. I have
+talked about it too much,” she said hypocritically; for I saw that such
+talking was now a small tremulous ecstasy. “There is a lady who is a
+great friend of mine; she does n’t want to go; I always talk to her
+about it. I tire her dreadfully. She told me once she didn’t know what
+would become of me. I should go crazy if I did not go to Europe, and I
+should certainly go crazy if I did.”
+
+“Well,” I said, “you have not gone yet, and nevertheless you are not
+crazy.”
+
+She looked at me a moment, and said, “I am not so sure. I don’t think of
+anything else. I am always thinking of it. It prevents me from thinking
+of things that are nearer home, things that I ought to attend to. That
+is a kind of craziness.”
+
+“The cure for it is to go,” I said.
+
+“I have a faith that I shall go. I have a cousin in Europe!” she
+announced.
+
+We turned over some more photographs, and I asked her if she had always
+lived at Grimwinter.
+
+“Oh, no, sir,” said Miss Spencer. “I have spent twenty-three months in
+Boston.”
+
+I answered, jocosely, that in that case foreign lands would probably
+prove a disappointment to her; but I quite failed to alarm her.
+
+“I know more about them than you might think,” she said, with her shy,
+neat little smile. “I mean by reading; I have read a great deal I have
+not only read Byron; I have read histories and guidebooks. I know I
+shall like it.”
+
+“I understand your case,” I rejoined. “You have the native American
+passion,--the passion for the picturesque. With us, I think it is
+primordial,--antecedent to experience. Experience comes and only shows
+us something we have dreamt of.”
+
+“I think that is very true,” said Caroline Spencer. “I have dreamt of
+everything; I shall know it all!”
+
+“I am afraid you have wasted a great deal of time.”
+
+“Oh, yes, that has been my great wickedness.”
+
+The people about us had begun to scatter; they were taking their leave.
+She got up and put out her hand to me, timidly, but with a peculiar
+brightness in her eyes.
+
+“I am going back there,” I said, as I shook hands with her. “I shall
+look out for you.”
+
+“I will tell you,” she answered, “if I am disappointed.”
+
+And she went away, looking delicately agitated, and moving her little
+straw fan.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A few months after this I returned to Europe, and some three years
+elapsed. I had been living in Paris, and, toward the end of October, I
+went from that city to Havre, to meet my sister and her husband, who
+had written me that they were about to arrive there. On reaching Havre
+I found that the steamer was already in; I was nearly two hours late.
+I repaired directly to the hotel, where my relatives were already
+established. My sister had gone to bed, exhausted and disabled by her
+voyage; she was a sadly incompetent sailor, and her sufferings on this
+occasion had been extreme. She wished, for the moment, for undisturbed
+rest, and was unable to see me more than five minutes; so it was agreed
+that we should remain at Havre until the next day. My brother-in-law,
+who was anxious about his wife, was unwilling to leave her room; but
+she insisted upon his going out with me to take a walk and recover his
+landlegs. The early autumn day was warm and charming, and our stroll
+through the bright-colored, busy streets of the old French seaport was
+sufficiently entertaining. We walked along the sunny, noisy quays, and
+then turned into a wide, pleasant street, which lay half in sun and
+half in shade--a French provincial street, that looked like an old
+water-color drawing: tall, gray, steep-roofed, red-gabled, many-storied
+houses; green shutters on windows and old scroll-work above them;
+flower-pots in balconies, and white-capped women in doorways. We walked
+in the shade; all this stretched away on the sunny side of the street
+and made a picture. We looked at it as we passed along; then, suddenly,
+my brother-in-law stopped, pressing my arm and staring. I followed his
+gaze and saw that we had paused just before coming to a _café_, where,
+under an awning, several tables and chairs were disposed upon the
+pavement The windows were open behind; half a dozen plants in tubs were
+ranged beside the door; the pavement was besprinkled with clean bran.
+It was a nice little, quiet, old-fashioned _café_; inside, in the
+comparative dusk, I saw a stout, handsome woman, with pink ribbons in
+her cap, perched up with a mirror behind her back, smiling at some one
+who was out of sight. All this, however, I perceived afterwards; what I
+first observed was a lady sitting alone, outside, at one of the little
+marble-topped tables. My brother-in-law had stopped to look at her.
+There was something on the little table, but she was leaning back
+quietly, with her hands folded, looking down the street, away from us.
+I saw her only in something less than profile; nevertheless, I instantly
+felt that I had seen her before.
+
+“The little lady of the steamer!” exclaimed my brother-in-law.
+
+“Was she on your steamer?” I asked.
+
+“From morning till night She was never sick. She used to sit perpetually
+at the side of the vessel with her hands crossed that way, looking at
+the eastward horizon.”
+
+“Are you going to speak to her?”
+
+“I don’t know her. I never made acquaintance with her. I was too seedy.
+But I used to watch her and--I don’t know why--to be interested in her.
+She’s a dear little Yankee woman. I have an idea she is a schoolmistress
+taking a holiday, for which her scholars have made up a purse.”
+
+She turned her face a little more into profile, looking at the steep
+gray house-fronts opposite to her. Then I said, “I shall speak to her
+myself.”
+
+“I would n’t; she is very shy,” said my brother-in-law.
+
+“My dear fellow, I know her. I once showed her photographs at a
+tea-party.”
+
+And I went up to her. She turned and looked at me, and I saw she was in
+fact Miss Caroline Spencer. But she was not so quick to recognize me;
+she looked startled. I pushed a chair to the table and sat down.
+
+“Well,” I said, “I hope you are not disappointed!”
+
+She stared, blushing a little; then she gave a small jump which betrayed
+recognition.
+
+“It was you who showed me the photographs, at Grimwinter!”
+
+“Yes, it was I. This happens very charmingly, for I feel as if it were
+for me to give you a formal reception here, an official welcome. I
+talked to you so much about Europe.”
+
+“You didn’t say too much. I am so happy!” she softly exclaimed.
+
+Very happy she looked. There was no sign of her being older; she was as
+gravely, decently, demurely pretty as before. If she had seemed before a
+thin-stemmed, mild-hued flower of Puritanism, it may be imagined whether
+in her present situation this delicate bloom was less apparent. Beside
+her an old gentleman was drinking absinthe; behind her the _dame de
+comptoir_ in the pink ribbons was calling “Alcibiade! Alcibiade!” to the
+long-aproned waiter. I explained to Miss Spencer that my companion
+had lately been her shipmate, and my brother-in-law came up and was
+introduced to her. But she looked at him as if she had never seen him
+before, and I remembered that he had told me that her eyes were always
+fixed upon the eastward horizon. She had evidently not noticed him, and,
+still timidly smiling, she made no attempt whatever to pretend that she
+had. I stayed with her at the _café_ door, and he went back to the hotel
+and to his wife. I said to Miss Spencer that this meeting of ours in
+the first hour of her landing was really very strange, but that I was
+delighted to be there and receive her first impressions.
+
+“Oh, I can’t tell you,” she said; “I feel as if I were in a dream. I
+have been sitting here for an hour, and I don’t want to move. Everything
+is so picturesque. I don’t know whether the coffee has intoxicated me;
+it’s so delicious.”
+
+“Really,” said I, “if you are so pleased with this poor prosaic Havre,
+you will have no admiration left for better things. Don’t spend your
+admiration all the first day; remember it’s your intellectual letter of
+credit. Remember all the beautiful places and things that are waiting
+for you; remember that lovely Italy!”
+
+“I’m not afraid of running short,” she said gayly, still looking at the
+opposite houses. “I could sit here all day, saying to myself that here I
+am at last. It’s so dark and old and different.”
+
+“By the way,” I inquired, “how come you to be sitting here? Have you not
+gone to one of the inns?” For I was half amused, half alarmed, at the
+good conscience with which this delicately pretty woman had stationed
+herself in conspicuous isolation on the edge of the _trottoir_.
+
+“My cousin brought me here,” she answered. “You know I told you I had a
+cousin in Europe. He met me at the steamer this morning.”
+
+“It was hardly worth his while to meet you if he was to desert you so
+soon.”
+
+“Oh, he has only left me for half an hour,” said Miss Spencer. “He has
+gone to get my money.”
+
+“Where is your money?”
+
+She gave a little laugh. “It makes me feel very fine to tell you! It is
+in some circular notes.”
+
+“And where are your circular notes?”
+
+“In my cousin’s pocket.”
+
+This statement was very serenely uttered, but--I can hardly say why--it
+gave me a sensible chill At the moment I should have been utterly
+unable to give the reason of this sensation, for I knew nothing of Miss
+Spencer’s cousin. Since he was her cousin, the presumption was in his
+favor. But I felt suddenly uncomfortable at the thought that, half an
+hour after her landing, her scanty funds should have passed into his
+hands.
+
+“Is he to travel with you?” I asked.
+
+“Only as far as Paris. He is an art-student, in Paris. I wrote to him
+that I was coming, but I never expected him to come off to the ship. I
+supposed he would only just meet me at the train in Paris. It is very
+kind of him. But he _is_ very kind, and very bright.”
+
+I instantly became conscious of an extreme curiosity to see this bright
+cousin who was an art-student.
+
+“He is gone to the banker’s?” I asked.
+
+“Yes, to the banker’s. He took me to a hotel, such a queer, quaint,
+delicious little place, with a court in the middle, and a gallery all
+round, and a lovely landlady, in such a beautifully fluted cap, and
+such a perfectly fitting dress! After a while we came out to walk to the
+banker’s, for I haven’t got any French money. But I was very dizzy from
+the motion of the vessel, and I thought I had better sit down. He found
+this place for me here, and he went off to the banker’s himself. I am to
+wait here till he comes back.”
+
+It may seem very fantastic, but it passed through my mind that he would
+never come back. I settled myself in my chair beside Miss Spencer and
+determined to await the event. She was extremely observant; there was
+something touching in it. She noticed everything that the movement of
+the street brought before us,--peculiarities of costume, the shapes of
+vehicles, the big Norman horses, the fat priests, the shaven poodles.
+We talked of these things, and there was something charming in her
+freshness of perception and the way her book-nourished fancy recognized
+and welcomed everything.
+
+“And when your cousin comes back, what are you going to do?” I asked.
+
+She hesitated a moment. “We don’t quite know.”
+
+“When do you go to Paris? If you go by the four o’clock train, I may
+have the pleasure of making the journey with you.”
+
+“I don’t think we shall do that. My cousin thinks I had better stay here
+a few days.”
+
+“Oh!” said I; and for five minutes said nothing more. I was wondering
+what her cousin was, in vulgar parlance, “up to.” I looked up and
+down the street, but saw nothing that looked like a bright American
+art-student. At last I took the liberty of observing that Havre was
+hardly a place to choose as one of the æsthetic stations of a European
+tour. It was a place of convenience, nothing more; a place of transit,
+through which transit should be rapid. I recommended her to go to Paris
+by the afternoon train, and meanwhile to amuse herself by driving to the
+ancient fortress at the mouth of the harbor,--that picturesque circular
+structure which bore the name of Francis the First, and looked like a
+small castle of St. Angelo. (It has lately been demolished.)
+
+She listened with much interest; then for a moment she looked grave.
+
+“My cousin told me that when he returned he should have something
+particular to say to me, and that we could do nothing or decide nothing
+until I should have heard it. But I will make him tell me quickly, and
+then we will go to the ancient fortress. There is no hurry to get to
+Paris; there is plenty of time.”
+
+She smiled with her softly severe little lips as she spoke those last
+words. But I, looking at her with a purpose, saw just a tiny gleam of
+apprehension in her eye.
+
+“Don’t tell me,” I said, “that this wretched man is going to give you
+bad news!”
+
+“I suspect it is a little bad, but I don’t believe it is very bad. At
+any rate, I must listen to it.”
+
+I looked at her again an instant. “You didn’t come to Europe to
+listen,” I said. “You came to see!” But now I was sure her cousin
+would come back; since he had something disagreeable to say to her, he
+certainly would turn up. We sat a while longer, and I asked her about
+her plans of travel She had them on her fingers’ ends, and she told over
+the names with a kind of solemn distinctness: from Paris to Dijon and
+to Avignon, from Avignon to Marseilles and the Cornice road; thence to
+Genoa, to Spezia, to Pisa, to Florence, to Home. It apparently had
+never occurred to her that there could be the least incommodity in her
+travelling alone; and since she was unprovided with a companion I of
+course scrupulously abstained from disturbing her sense of security.
+At last her cousin came back. I saw him turn towards us out of a side
+street, and from the moment my eyes rested upon him I felt that this was
+the bright American art-student. He wore a slouch hat and a rusty black
+velvet jacket, such as I had often encountered in the Rue Bonaparte. His
+shirt-collar revealed the elongation of a throat which, at a distance,
+was not strikingly statuesque. He was tall and lean; he had red hair and
+freckles. So much I had time to observe while he approached the _café_,
+staring at me with natural surprise from under his umbrageous coiffure.
+When he came up to us I immediately introduced myself to him as an old
+acquaintance of Miss Spencer. He looked at me hard with a pair of little
+red eyes, then he made me a solemn bow in the French fashion, with his
+sombrero.
+
+“You were not on the ship?” he said.
+
+“No, I was not on the ship. I have been in Europe these three years.”
+
+He bowed once more, solemnly, and motioned me to be seated again. I sat
+down, but it was only for the purpose of observing him an instant; I saw
+it was time I should return to my sister. Miss Spencer’s cousin was a
+queer fellow. Nature had not shaped him for a Raphaelesque or Byronic
+attire, and his velvet doublet and naked neck were not in harmony with
+his facial attributes. His hair was cropped close to his head; his ears
+were large and ill-adjusted to the same. He had a lackadaisical carriage
+and a sentimental droop which were peculiarly at variance with his keen,
+strange-colored eyes. Perhaps I was prejudiced, but I thought his eyes
+treacherous. He said nothing for some time; he leaned his hands on his
+cane and looked up and down the street Then at last, slowly lifting
+his cane and pointing with it, “That’s a very nice bit,” he remarked,
+softly. He had his head on one side, and his little eyes were half
+closed. I followed the direction of his stick; the object it indicated
+was a red cloth hung out of an old window. “Nice bit of color,” he
+continued; and without moving his head he transferred his half-closed
+gaze to me. “Composes well,” he pursued. “Make a nice thing.” He spoke
+in a hard vulgar voice.
+
+“I see you have a great deal of eye,” I replied. “Your cousin tells
+me you are studying art.” He looked at me in the same way without
+answering, and I went on with deliberate urbanity, “I suppose you are at
+the studio of one of those great men.”
+
+Still he looked at me, and then he said softly, “Gérôme.”
+
+“Do you like it?” I asked.
+
+“Do you understand French?” he said.
+
+“Some kinds,” I answered.
+
+He kept his little eyes on me; then he said, “J’adore la peinture!”
+
+“Oh, I understand that kind!” I rejoined. Miss Spencer laid her hand
+upon her cousin’s arm with a little pleased and fluttered movement;
+it was delightful to be among people who were on such easy terms with
+foreign tongues. I got up to take leave, and asked Miss Spencer where,
+in Paris, I might have the honor of waiting upon her. To what hotel
+would she go?
+
+She turned to her cousin inquiringly, and he honored me again with his
+little languid leer. “Do you know the Hôtel des Princes?”
+
+“I know where it is.”
+
+“I shall take her there.”
+
+“I congratulate you,” I said to Caroline Spencer. “I believe it is the
+best inn in the world; and in case I should still have a moment to call
+upon you here, where are you lodged?”
+
+“Oh, it’s such a pretty name,” said Miss Spencer gleefully. “À la Belle
+Normande.”
+
+As I left them her cousin gave me a great flourish with his picturesque
+hat.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+My sister, as it proved, was not sufficiently restored to leave Havre by
+the afternoon train; so that, as the autumn dusk began to fall, I found
+myself at liberty to call at the sign of the Fair Norman. I must confess
+that I had spent much of the interval in wondering what the disagreeable
+thing was that my charming friend’s disagreeable cousin had been telling
+her. The “Belle Normande” was a modest inn in a shady bystreet, where it
+gave me satisfaction to think Miss Spencer must have encountered local
+color in abundance. There was a crooked little court, where much of the
+hospitality of the house was carried on; there was a staircase climbing
+to bedrooms on the outer side of the wall; there was a small trickling
+fountain with a stucco statuette in the midst of it; there was a little
+boy in a white cap and apron cleaning copper vessels at a conspicuous
+kitchen door; there was a chattering landlady, neatly laced, arranging
+apricots and grapes into an artistic pyramid upon a pink plate. I looked
+about, and on a green bench outside of an open door labelled _Salle à
+Manger_, I perceived Caroline Spencer. No sooner had I looked at her
+than I saw that something had happened since the morning. She was
+leaning back on her bench, her hands were clasped in her lap, and her
+eyes were fixed upon the landlady, at the other side of the court,
+manipulating her apricots.
+
+But I saw she was not thinking of apricots. She was staring absently,
+thoughtfully; as I came near her I perceived that she had been crying.
+I sat down on the bench beside her before she saw me; then, when she had
+done so, she simply turned round, without surprise, and rested her sad
+eyes upon me. Something very bad indeed had happened; she was completely
+changed.
+
+I immediately charged her with it. “Your cousin has been giving you bad
+news; you are in great distress.”
+
+For a moment she said nothing, and I supposed that she was afraid to
+speak, lest her tears should come back. But presently I perceived that
+in the short time that had elapsed since my leaving her in the morning
+she had shed them all, and that she was now softly stoical, intensely
+composed.
+
+“My poor cousin is in distress,” she said at last. “His news was bad.”
+ Then, after a brief hesitation, “He was in terrible want of money.”
+
+“In want of yours, you mean?”
+
+“Of any that he could get--honestly. Mine was the only money.”
+
+“And he has taken yours?”
+
+She hesitated again a moment, but her glance, meanwhile, was pleading.
+“I gave him what I had.”
+
+I have always remembered the accent of those words as the most angelic
+bit of human utterance I had ever listened to; but then, almost with a
+sense of personal outrage, I jumped up. “Good heavens!” I said, “do you
+call that getting, it honestly?”
+
+I had gone too far; she blushed deeply. “We will not speak of it,” she
+said.
+
+“We _must_ speak of it,” I answered, sitting down again. “I am your
+friend; it seems to me you need one. What is the matter with your
+cousin?”
+
+“He is in debt.”
+
+“No doubt! But what is the special fitness of your paying his debts?”
+
+“He has told me all his story; I am very sorry for him.”
+
+“So am I! But I hope he will give you back your money.”
+
+“Certainly he will; as soon as he can.”
+
+“When will that be?”
+
+“When he has finished his great picture.”
+
+“My dear young lady, confound his great picture! Where is this desperate
+cousin?”
+
+She certainly hesitated now. Then,--“At his dinner,” she answered.
+
+I turned about and looked through the open door into the _salle à
+manger_. There, alone at the end of a long table, I perceived the object
+of Miss Spencer’s compassion, the bright young art-student. He was
+dining too attentively to notice me at first; but in the act of setting
+down a well-emptied wineglass he caught sight of my observant attitude.
+He paused in his repast, and, with his head on one side and his meagre
+jaws slowly moving, fixedly returned my gaze. Then the landlady came
+lightly brushing by with her pyramid of apricots.
+
+“And that nice little plate of fruit is for him?” I exclaimed.
+
+Miss Spencer glanced at it tenderly. “They do that so prettily!” she
+murmured.
+
+I felt helpless and irritated. “Come now, really,” I said; “do you
+approve of that long strong fellow accepting your funds?” She looked
+away from me; I was evidently giving her pain. The case was hopeless;
+the long strong fellow had “interested” her.
+
+“Excuse me if I speak of him so unceremoniously,” I said. “But you are
+really too generous, and he is not quite delicate enough. He made his
+debts himself; he ought to pay them himself.”
+
+“He has been foolish,” she answered; “I know that. He has told me
+everything. We had a long talk this morning; the poor fellow threw
+himself upon my charity. He has signed notes to a large amount.”
+
+“The more fool he!”
+
+“He is in extreme distress; and it is not only himself. It is his poor
+wife.”
+
+“Ah, he has a poor wife?”
+
+“I didn’t know it; but he confessed everything. He married two years
+since, secretly.”
+
+“Why secretly?”
+
+Caroline Spencer glanced about her, as if she feared listeners. Then
+softly, in a little impressive tone,--“She was a countess!”
+
+“Are you very sure of that?”
+
+“She has written me a most beautiful letter.”
+
+“Asking you for money, eh?”
+
+“Asking me for confidence and sympathy,” said Miss Spencer. “She has
+been disinherited by her father. My cousin told me the story, and she
+tells it in her own way, in the letter. It is like an old romance.
+Her father opposed the marriage, and when he discovered that she had
+secretly disobeyed him he cruelly cast her off. It is really most
+romantic. They are the oldest family in Provence.”
+
+I looked and listened in wonder. It really seemed that the poor woman
+was enjoying the “romance” of having a discarded countess-cousin, out of
+Provence, so deeply as almost to lose the sense of what the forfeiture
+of her money meant for her.
+
+“My dear young lady,” I said, “you don’t want to be ruined for
+picturesqueness’ sake?”
+
+“I shall not be ruined. I shall come back before long to stay with them.
+The Countess insists upon that.”
+
+“Come back! You are going home, then?”
+
+She sat for a moment with her eyes lowered, then with an heroic
+suppression of a faint tremor of the voice,--“I have no money for
+travelling!” she answered.
+
+“You gave it _all_ up?”
+
+“I have kept enough to take me home.”
+
+I gave an angry groan; and at this juncture Miss Spencer’s cousin,
+the fortunate possessor of her sacred savings and of the hand of the
+Provençal countess, emerged from the little dining-room. He stood on the
+threshold for an instant, removing the stone from a plump apricot which
+he had brought away from the table; then he put the apricot into his
+mouth, and while he let it sojourn there, gratefully, stood looking at
+us, with his long legs apart and his hands dropped into the pockets of
+his velvet jacket. My companion got up, giving him a thin glance which
+I caught in its passage, and which expressed a strange commixture of
+resignation and fascination,--a sort of perverted exaltation. Ugly,
+vulgar, pretentious, dishonest, as I thought the creature, he had
+appealed successfully to her eager and tender imagination. I was deeply
+disgusted, but I had no warrant to interfere, and at any rate I felt
+that it would be vain.
+
+The young man waved his hand with a pictorial gesture. “Nice old court,”
+ he observed. “Nice mellow old place. Good tone in that brick. Nice
+crooked old staircase.”
+
+Decidedly, I could n’t stand it; without responding I gave my hand to
+Caroline Spencer. She looked at me an instant with her little white
+face and expanded eyes, and as she showed her pretty teeth I suppose she
+meant to smile.
+
+“Don’t be sorry for me,” she said, “I am very sure I shall see something
+of this dear old Europe yet.”
+
+I told her that I would not bid her goodby; I should find a moment
+to come back the next morning. Her cousin, who had put on his sombrero
+again, flourished it off at me by way of a bow, upon which I took my
+departure.
+
+The next morning I came back to the inn, where I met in the court the
+landlady, more loosely laced than in the evening. On my asking for Miss
+Spencer,--“_Partie_, monsieu,” said the hostess. “She went away last
+night at ten o’clock, with her--her--not her husband, eh?--in fine,
+her _monsieur_. They went down to the American ship.” I turned away; the
+poor girl had been about thirteen hours in Europe.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+I myself, more fortunate, was there some five years longer. During this
+period I lost my friend Latouche, who died of a malarious fever during a
+tour in the Levant. One of the first things I did on my return was to go
+up to Grimwinter to pay a consolatory visit to his poor mother. I found
+her in deep affliction, and I sat with her the whole of the morning
+that followed my arrival (I had come in late at night), listening to
+her tearful descant and singing the praises of my friend. We talked of
+nothing else, and our conversation terminated only with the arrival of
+a quick little woman who drove herself up to the door in a “carryall,”
+ and whom I saw toss the reins upon the horse’s back with the briskness
+of a startled sleeper throwing back the bed-clothes. She jumped out
+of the carryall and she jumped into the room. She proved to be the
+minister’s wife and the great town-gossip, and she had evidently, in the
+latter capacity, a choice morsel to communicate. I was as sure of this
+as I was that poor Mrs. Latouche was not absolutely too bereaved to
+listen to her. It seemed to me discreet to retire; I said I believed I
+would go and take a walk before dinner.
+
+“And, by the way,” I added, “if you will tell me where my old friend
+Miss Spencer lives, I will walk to her house.”
+
+The minister’s wife immediately responded. Miss Spencer lived in the
+fourth house beyond the “Baptist church; the Baptist church was the one
+on the right, with that queer green thing over the door; they called it
+a portico, but it looked more like an old-fashioned bedstead.
+
+“Yes, do go and see poor Caroline,” said Mrs. Latouche. “It will refresh
+her to see a strange face.”
+
+“I should think she had had enough of strange faces!” cried the
+minister’s wife.
+
+“I mean, to see a visitor,” said Mrs. Latouche, amending her phrase.
+
+“I should think she had had enough of visitors!” her companion rejoined.
+“But _you_ don’t mean to stay ten years,” she added, glancing at me.
+
+“Has she a visitor of that sort?” I inquired, perplexed.
+
+“You will see the sort!” said the minister’s wife. “She’s easily seen;
+she generally sits in the front yard. Only take care what you say to
+her, and be very sure you are polite.”
+
+“Ah, she is so sensitive?”
+
+The minister’s wife jumped up and dropped me a curtsey, a most ironical
+curtsey.
+
+“That’s what she is, if you please. She’s a countess!”
+
+And pronouncing this word with the most scathing accent, the little
+woman seemed fairly to laugh in the Countess’s face. I stood a moment,
+staring, wondering, remembering.
+
+“Oh, I shall be very polite!” I cried; and grasping my hat and stick, I
+went on my way.
+
+I found Miss Spencer’s residence without difficulty. The Baptist church
+was easily identified, and the small dwelling near it, of a rusty
+white, with a large central chimney-stack and a Virginia creeper, seemed
+naturally and properly the abode of a frugal old maid with a taste for
+the picturesque. As I approached I slackened my pace, for I had heard
+that some one was always sitting in the front yard, and I wished
+to reconnoitre. I looked cautiously over the low white fence which
+separated the small garden-space from the unpaved street; but I descried
+nothing in the shape of a countess. A small straight path led up to the
+crooked doorstep, and on either side of it was a little grass-plot,
+fringed with currant-bushes. In the middle of the grass, on either side,
+was a large quince-tree, full of antiquity and contortions, and beneath
+one of the quince-trees were placed a small table and a couple of
+chairs. On the table lay a piece of unfinished embroidery and two or
+three books in bright-colored paper covers. I went in at the gate and
+paused halfway along the path, scanning the place for some farther
+token of its occupant, before whom--I could hardly have said why--I
+hesitated abruptly to present myself. Then I saw that the poor little
+house was very shabby. I felt a sudden doubt of my right to intrude;
+for curiosity had been my motive, and curiosity here seemed singularly
+indelicate. While I hesitated, a figure appeared in the open doorway and
+stood there looking at me. I immediately recognized Caroline Spencer,
+but she looked at me as if she had never seen me before. Gently, but
+gravely and timidly, I advanced to the doorstep, and then I said, with
+an attempt at friendly badinage,--
+
+“I waited for you over there to come back, but you never came.”
+
+“Waited where, sir?” she asked softly, and her light-colored eyes
+expanded more than before.
+
+She was much older; she looked tired and wasted.
+
+“Well,” I said, “I waited at Havre.”
+
+She stared; then she recognized me. She smiled and blushed and clasped
+her two hands together. “I remember you now,” she said. “I remember that
+day.” But she stood there, neither coming out nor asking me to come in.
+She was embarrassed.
+
+I, too, felt a little awkward. I poked my stick into the path. “I kept
+looking out for you, year after year,” I said.
+
+“You mean in Europe?” murmured Miss Spencer.
+
+“In Europe, of course! Here, apparently, you are easy enough to find.”
+
+She leaned her hand against the unpainted doorpost, and her head fell a
+little to one side. She looked at me for a moment without speaking, and
+I thought I recognized the expression that one sees in women’s eyes
+when tears are rising. Suddenly she stepped out upon the cracked slab
+of stone before the threshold and closed the door behind her. Then she
+began to smile intently, and I saw that her teeth were as pretty as
+ever. But there had been tears too.
+
+“Have you been there ever since?” she asked, almost in a whisper.
+
+“Until three weeks ago. And you--you never came back?”
+
+Still looking at me with her fixed smile, she put her hand behind her
+and opened the door again. “I am not very polite,” she said. “Won’t you
+come in?”
+
+“I am afraid I incommode you.”
+
+“Oh, no!” she answered, smiling more than ever. And she pushed back the
+door, with a sign that I should enter.
+
+I went in, following her. She led the way to a small room on the left of
+the narrow hall, which I supposed to be her parlor, though it was at the
+back of the house, and we passed the closed door of another apartment
+which apparently enjoyed a view of the quince-trees. This one looked
+out upon a small woodshed and two clucking hens. But I thought it very
+pretty, until I saw that its elegance was of the most frugal kind; after
+which, presently, I thought it prettier still, for I had never seen
+faded chintz and old mezzotint engravings, framed in varnished autumn
+leaves, disposed in so graceful a fashion. Miss Spencer sat down on a
+very small portion of the sofa, with her hands tightly clasped in her
+lap. She looked ten years older, and it would have sounded very perverse
+now to speak of her as pretty. But I thought her so; or at least I
+thought her touching. She was peculiarly agitated. I tried to appear not
+to notice it; but suddenly, in the most inconsequent fashion,--it was an
+irresistible memory of our little friendship at Havre,--I said to her,
+“I do incommode you. You are distressed.”
+
+She raised her two hands to her face, and for a moment kept it buried in
+them. Then, taking them away,--“It’s because you remind me--” she said.
+
+“I remind you, you mean, of that miserable day at Havre?”
+
+She shook her head. “It was not miserable. It was delightful.”
+
+“I never was so shocked as when, on going back to your inn the next
+morning, I found you had set sail again.”
+
+She was silent a moment; and then she said, “Please let us not speak of
+that.”
+
+“Did you come straight back here?” I asked.
+
+“I was back here just thirty days after I had gone away.”
+
+“And here you have remained ever since?”
+
+“Oh, yes!” she said gently.
+
+“When are you going to Europe again?”
+
+This question seemed brutal; but there was something that irritated me
+in the softness of her resignation, and I wished to extort from her some
+expression of impatience.
+
+She fixed her eyes for a moment upon a small sunspot on the carpet;
+then she got up and lowered the window-blind a little, to obliterate
+it. Presently, in the same mild voice, answering my question, she said,
+“Never!”
+
+“I hope your cousin repaid you your money.”
+
+“I don’t care for it now,” she said, looking away from me.
+
+“You don’t care for your money?”
+
+“For going to Europe.”
+
+“Do you mean that you would not go if you could?”
+
+“I can’t--I can’t,” said Caroline Spencer. “It is all over; I never
+think of it.”
+
+“He never repaid you, then!” I exclaimed.
+
+“Please--please,” she began.
+
+But she stopped; she was looking toward the door. There had been a
+rustling aud a sound of steps in the hall.
+
+I also looked toward the door, which was open, and now admitted another
+person, a lady, who paused just within the threshold. Behind her came
+a young man. The lady looked at me with a good deal of fixedness, long
+enough for my glance to receive a vivid impression of herself. Then
+she turned to Caroline Spencer, and, with a smile and a strong foreign
+accent,--
+
+“Excuse my interruption!” she said. “I knew not you had company, the
+gentleman came in so quietly.”
+
+With this she directed her eyes toward me again.
+
+She was very strange; yet my first feeling was that I had seen her
+before. Then I perceived that I had only seen ladies who were very much
+like her. But I had seen them very far away from Grimwinter, and it was
+an odd sensation to be seeing her here. Whither was it the sight of her
+seemed to transport me? To some dusky landing before a shabby Parisian
+_quatrième_,--to an open door revealing a greasy antechamber, and to
+Madame leaning over the banisters, while she holds a faded dressing-gown
+together and bawls down to the portress to bring up her coffee. Miss
+Spencer’s visitor was a very large woman, of middle age, with a plump,
+dead-white face, and hair drawn back _a la chinoise_. She had a small
+penetrating eye, and what is called in French an agreeable smile.
+She wore an old pink cashmere dressing-gown, covered with white
+embroideries, and, like the figure in my momentary vision, she was
+holding it together in front with a bare and rounded arm and a plump and
+deeply dimpled hand.
+
+“It is only to spick about my _café_,” she said to Miss Spencer, with
+her agreeable smile. “I should like it served in the garden under the
+leetle tree.”
+
+The young man behind her had now stepped into the room, and he also
+stood looking at me. He was a pretty-faced little fellow, with an air
+of provincial foppishness,--a tiny Adonis of Grimwinter. He had a
+small pointed nose, a small pointed chin, and, as I observed, the most
+diminutive feet. He looked at me foolishly, with his mouth open.
+
+“You shall have your coffee,” said Miss Spencer, who had a faint red
+spot in each of her cheeks.
+
+“It is well!” said the lady in the dressing-gown. “Find your bouk,” she
+added, turning to the young man.
+
+He gazed vaguely round the room. “My grammar, d’ye mean?” he asked,
+with a helpless intonation.
+
+But the large lady was inspecting me, curiously, and gathering in her
+dressing-gown with her white arm.
+
+“Find your bouk, my friend,” she repeated.
+
+“My poetry, d’ye mean?” said the young man, also staring at me again.
+
+“Never mind your bouk,” said his companion. “To-day we will talk. We
+will make some conversation. But we must not interrupt. Come;” and she
+turned away. “Under the leetle tree,” she added, for the benefit of Miss
+Spencer.
+
+Then she gave me a sort of salutation, and a “Monsieur!” with which she
+swept away again, followed by the young man.
+
+Caroline Spencer stood there with her eyes fixed upon the ground.
+
+“Who is that?” I asked.
+
+“The Countess, my cousin.”
+
+“And who is the young man?”
+
+“Her pupil, Mr. Mixter.”
+
+This description of the relation between the two persons who had just
+left the room made me break into a little laugh. Miss Spencer looked at
+me gravely.
+
+“She gives French lessons; she has lost her fortune.”
+
+“I see,” I said. “She is determined to be a burden to no one. That is
+very proper.”
+
+Miss Spencer looked down on the ground again, “I must go and get the
+coffee,” she said.
+
+“Has the lady many pupils?” I asked.
+
+“She has only Mr. Mixter. She gives all her time to him.”
+
+At this I could not laugh, though I smelt provocation; Miss Spencer was
+too grave. “He pays very well,” she presently added, with simplicity.
+“He is very rich. He is very kind. He takes the Countess to drive.” And
+she was turning away.
+
+“You are going for the Countess’s coffee?” I said.
+
+“If you will excuse me a few moments.”
+
+“Is there no one else to do it?”
+
+She looked at me with the softest serenity. “I keep no servants.”
+
+“Can she not wait upon herself?”
+
+“She is not used to that.”
+
+“I see,” said I, as gently as possible. “But before you go, tell me
+this: who is this lady?”
+
+“I told you about her before--that day. She is the wife of my cousin,
+whom you saw.”
+
+“The lady who was disowned by her family in consequence of her
+marriage?”
+
+“Yes; they have never seen her again. They have cast her off.”
+
+“And where is her husband?”
+
+“He is dead.”
+
+“And where is your money?”
+
+The poor girl flinched; there was something too consistent in my
+questions. “I don’t know,” she said wearily.
+
+But I continued a moment. “On her husband’s death this lady came over
+here?”
+
+“Yes, she arrived one day.”
+
+“How long ago?”
+
+“Two years.”
+
+“She has been here ever since?”
+
+“Every moment.”
+
+“How does she like it?”
+
+“Not at all.”
+
+“And how do _you_ like it?”
+
+Miss Spencer laid her face in her two hands an instant, as she had done
+ten minutes before.
+
+Then, quickly, she went to get the Countess’s coffee.
+
+I remained alone in the little parlor; I wanted to see more, to learn
+more. At the end of five minutes the young man whom Miss Spencer had
+described as the Countess’s pupil came in. He stood looking at me for a
+moment with parted lips. I saw he was a very rudimentary young man.
+
+“She wants to know if you won’t come out there,” he observed at last.
+
+“Who wants to know?”
+
+“The Countess. That French lady.”
+
+“She has asked you to bring me?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the young man feebly, looking at my six feet of
+stature.
+
+I went out with him, and we found the Countess sitting under one of
+the little quince-trees in front of the house. She was drawing a needle
+through the piece of embroidery which she had taken from the small
+table. She pointed graciously to the chair beside her, and I seated
+myself. Mr. Mixter glanced about him, and then sat down in the grass at
+her feet. He gazed upward, looking with parted lips from the Countess
+to me. “I am sure you speak French,” said the Countess, fixing her
+brilliant little eyes upon me.
+
+“I do, madam, after a fashion,” I answered in the lady’s own tongue.
+
+“_Voilà!_” she cried most expressively. “I knew it so soon as I looked
+at you. You have been in my poor dear country.”
+
+“A long time.”
+
+“You know Paris?”
+
+“Thoroughly, madam.” And with a certain conscious purpose I let my eyes
+meet her own.
+
+She presently, hereupon, moved her own and glanced down at Mr. Mixter
+“What are we talking about?” she demanded of her attentive pupil.
+
+He pulled his knees up, plucked at the grass with his hand, stared,
+blushed a little. “You are talking French,” said Mr. Mixter.
+
+“_La belle découverte!_” said the Countess. “Here are ten months,” she
+explained to me, “that I am giving him lessons. Don’t put yourself out
+not to say he’s an idiot; he won’t understand you.”
+
+“I hope your other pupils are more gratifying,” I remarked.
+
+“I have no others. They don’t know what French is in this place; they
+don’t want to know. You may therefore imagine the pleasure it is to me
+to meet a person who speaks it like yourself.” I replied that my own
+pleasure was not less; and she went on drawing her stitches through
+her embroidery, with her little finger curled out. Every few moments
+she put her eyes close to her work, nearsightedly. I thought her a very
+disagreeable person; she was coarse, affected, dishonest, and no more a
+countess than I was a caliph. “Talk to me of Paris,” she went on. “The
+very name of it gives me an emotion! How long since you were there?”
+
+“Two months ago.”
+
+“Happy man! Tell me something about it What were they doing? Oh, for an
+hour of the boulevard!”
+
+“They were doing about what they are always doing,--amusing themselves a
+good deal.”
+
+“At the theatres, eh?” sighed the Countess. “At the _cafés-concerts_, at
+the little tables in front of the doors? _Quelle existence!_ You know I
+am a Parisienne, monsieur,” she added, “to my fingertips.”
+
+“Miss Spencer was mistaken, then,” I ventured to rejoin, “in telling me
+that you are a Provençale.”
+
+She stared a moment, then she put her nose to her embroidery, which had
+a dingy, desultory aspect. “Ah, I am a Provençale by birth; but I am a
+Parisienne by--inclination.”
+
+“And by experience, I suppose?” I said.
+
+She questioned me a moment with her hard little eyes. “Oh, experience!
+I could talk of experience if I wished. I never expected, for example,
+that experience had _this_ in store for me.” And she pointed with her
+bare elbow, and with a jerk of her head, at everything that surrounded
+her,--at the little white house, the quince-tree, the rickety paling,
+even at Mr. Mixter.
+
+“You are in exile!” I said, smiling.
+
+“You may imagine what it is! These two years that I have been here I
+have passed hours--hours! One gets used to things, and sometimes I
+think I have got used to this. But there are some things that are always
+beginning over again. For example, my coffee.”
+
+“Do you always have coffee at this hour?” I inquired.
+
+She tossed back her head and measured me.
+
+“At what hour would you prefer me to have it? I must have my little cup
+after breakfast.”
+
+“Ah, you breakfast at this hour?”
+
+“At midday--_comme cela se fait_. Here they breakfast at a quarter past
+seven! That ‘quarter past’ is charming!”
+
+“But you were telling me about your _coffee?_ I observed
+sympathetically.
+
+“My _cousine_ can’t believe in it; she can’t understand it. She’s an
+excellent girl; but that little cup of black coffee, with a drop of
+cognac, served at this hour,--they exceed her comprehension. So I have
+to break the ice every day, and it takes the coffee the time you see to
+arrive. And when it arrives, monsieur! If I don’t offer you any of it
+you must not take it ill. It will be because I know you have drunk it on
+the boulevard.”
+
+I resented extremely this scornful treatment of poor Caroline Spencer’s
+humble hospitality; but I said nothing, in order to say nothing uncivil.
+I only looked on Mr. Mixter, who had clasped his arms round his
+knees and was watching my companion’s demonstrative graces in solemn
+fascination. She presently saw that I was observing him; she glanced at
+me with a little bold explanatory smile. “You know, he adores me,” she
+murmured, putting her nose into her tapestry again. I expressed the
+promptest credence, and she went on. “He dreams of becoming my lover!
+Yes, it’s his dream. He has read a French novel; it took him six
+months. But ever since that he has thought himself the hero, and me
+the heroine!”
+
+Mr. Mixter had evidently not an idea that he was being talked about; he
+was too preoccupied with the ecstasy of contemplation. At this moment
+Caroline Spencer came out of the house, bearing a coffee-pot on a little
+tray. I noticed that on her way from the door to the table she gave me a
+single quick, vaguely appealing glance. I wondered what it signified; I
+felt that it signified a sort of half-frightened longing to know what,
+as a man of the world who had been in France, I thought of the Countess.
+It made me extremely uncomfortable. I could not tell her that the
+Countess was very possibly the runaway wife of a little hair-dresser. I
+tried suddenly, on the contrary, to show a high consideration for
+her. But I got up; I could n’t stay longer. It vexed me to see Caroline
+Spencer standing there like a waiting-maid.
+
+“You expect to remain some time at Grimwinter?” I said to the Countess.
+
+She gave a terrible shrug.
+
+“Who knows? Perhaps for years. When one is in misery!--_Chere belle_”
+ she added, turning to Miss Spencer, “you have forgotten the cognac!”
+
+I detained Caroline Spencer as, after looking a moment in silence at the
+little table, she was turning away to procure this missing delicacy. I
+silently gave her my hand in farewell. She looked very tired, but there
+was a strange hint of prospective patience in her severely mild little
+face. I thought she was rather glad I was going. Mr. Mixter had risen to
+his feet and was pouring out the Countess’s coffee. As I went back past
+the Baptist church I reflected that poor Miss Spencer had been right in
+her presentiment that she should still see something of that dear old
+Europe.
+
+
+
+
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