in, "in telling me
that you are a Provencale."

She stared a moment, then she put her nose to her embroidery, which had
a dingy, desultory aspect. "Ah, I am a Provencale 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 th