nature
to be menaced by the young American's general gentleness. The concluding
motive of Marie's writing to her grandmamma to invite Euphemia for a
three weeks' holiday to the castel in Auvergne involved, however, the
subtlest considerations. Mademoiselle de Mauves indeed, at this time
seventeen years of age and capable of views as wide as her wants, was as
proper a figure as could possibly have been found for the foreground
of a scene artfully designed; and Euphemia, whose years were of like
number, asked herself if a right harmony with such a place mightn't
come by humble prayer. It is a proof of the sincerity of the latter's
aspirations that the castel was not a shock to her faith. It was neither
a cheerful nor a luxurious abode, but it was as full of wonders as a
box of old heirlooms or objects "willed." It had battered towers and
an empty moat, a rusty drawbridge and a court paved with crooked
grass-grown slabs over which the antique coach-wheels of the lady with
the hooked nose seemed to awaken the echoes of the seventeenth century.
Euphemia was not frightened out of her dream; she had the pleasure of
seeing all the easier passages translated into truth, as the learner
of a language begins with the common words. She had a taste for old
servants, old anecdotes, old furniture, faded household colours and
sweetly stale odours--musty treasures in which the Chateau de Mauves
abounded. She made a dozen sketches in water-colours after her
conventual pattern; but sentimentally, as one may say, she was for ever
sketching with a freer hand.

Old Madame de Mauves had nothing severe but her nose, and she seemed to
Euphemia--what indeed she had every claim to pass for--the very image
and pattern of an "historical character." Belonging to a great order of
things, she patronised the young stranger who was ready to sit all day
at her feet and listen to anecdotes of the bon temps and quotations from
the family chronicles. Madame de Mauves was a very honest old woman; she
uttered her thoughts with ancient plainness. One day after pushing back
Euphemia's shining locks and blinking with some tenderness from behind
an immense face-a-main that acted as for the relegation of the girl
herself to the glass case of a museum, she declared with an energetic
shake of the head that she didn't know what to make of such a little
person. And in answer to the little person's evident wonder, "I should
like to advise you," she said, "but you seem t