Four Meetings | Page 8

"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