ld 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
Provencal 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 goo