ble as I could be
with my indifferent prospects. I should have been glad if he had fallen
in love with Miss Bordereau's maid or, failing this, had taken her
in aversion; either event might have brought about some kind of
catastrophe, and a catastrophe might have led to some parley. It was
my idea that she would have been sociable, and I myself on various
occasions saw her flit to and fro on domestic errands, so that I was
sure she was accessible. But I tasted of no gossip from that fountain,
and I afterward learned that Pasquale's affections were fixed upon an
object that made him heedless of other women. This was a young lady with
a powdered face, a yellow cotton gown, and much leisure, who used often
to come to see him. She practiced, at her convenience, the art of a
stringer of beads (these ornaments are made in Venice, in profusion; she
had her pocket full of them, and I used to find them on the floor of my
apartment), and kept an eye on the maiden in the house. It was not for
me of course to make the domestics tattle, and I never said a word to
Miss Bordereau's cook.

It seemed to me a proof of the old lady's determination to have nothing
to do with me that she should never have sent me a receipt for my three
months' rent. For some days I looked out for it and then, when I had
given it up, I wasted a good deal of time in wondering what her reason
had been for neglecting so indispensable and familiar a form. At first I
was tempted to send her a reminder, after which I relinquished the idea
(against my judgment as to what was right in the particular case), on
the general ground of wishing to keep quiet. If Miss Bordereau
suspected me of ulterior aims she would suspect me less if I should
be businesslike, and yet I consented not to be so. It was possible she
intended her omission as an impertinence, a visible irony, to show
how she could overreach people who attempted to overreach her. On that
hypothesis it was well to let her see that one did not notice her little
tricks. The real reading of the matter, I afterward perceived, was
simply the poor old woman's desire to emphasize the fact that I was in
the enjoyment of a favor as rigidly limited as it had been liberally
bestowed. She had given me part of her house, and now she would not give
me even a morsel of paper with her name on it. Let me say that even
at first this did not make me too miserable, for the whole episode was
essentially delightful to me. I foresaw th