The Two Vanrevels | Page 9

the reverse.
She seldom saw him, except at the table, when he sat with averted eyes,
and talked to her very little; and, while making elaborate preparation
for her introduction to his friends (such was his phrase) he treated her
with a perfunctory civility which made her wonder if her advent was
altogether welcome to him; bat when she noticed that his hair looked
darker than usual about every fourth day, she began to understand Why
he appeared ungrateful to her for growing up. He went out a great deal,
though no visitors came to the house; for it was known that Mr. Carewe
desired to present his daughter to no one until he presented her to all.
Fanchon Bareaud, indeed, made one hurried and embarrassed call,
evading Miss Betty's reference to the chevalier of the kitten with a
dexterity too nimble to be thought unintentional. Miss Carewe was
forbidden to return her friend's visit until after her debut; and Mr.
Carewe explained that there was always some worthless Young men
hanging about the Bareaud's, where (he did not add) they interfered
with a worthy oh one who desired to honor Fanchon's older sister,
Virginia, with his attentions.
This was no great hardship for Miss Betty, as, since plunging into the
Revolution with her great-uncle, she had lost some curiosity concerning
the men of to-day, doubting that they would show forth as heroic, as
debonnair, gay and tragic as he. He was the legendary hero of her
childhood; she remembered her mother's stories of him perhaps more
clearly than she remembered her mother; and one of the older Sisters

had known him in Paris and had talked of him at length, giving the
flavor of his dandyism and his beauty at first hand to his young relative.
He had been one of those hardy young men wearing unbelievable
garments, who began to appear in the garden of the Tuileries with
knives in their sleeves and cudgels in their hands, about April, 1794,
and whose dash and recklessness in many matters were the first
intimations that the Citizen Tallien was about to cause the Citizen
Robespierre to shoot himself through the jaw.
In the library hung a small, full-length drawing of Georges, done in
color by Miss Betty's grandmother; and this she carried to her own
room an& studied long and ardently, until sometimes the man himself
seemed to stand before her, in spite of the fact that Mile. Meithac had
not a distinguished talent and M. Meilhac's features might have been
anybody's. It was to be seen, however, that he was smiling.
Miss Betty had an impression that her grandmother's art of portraiture
would have been more-successful with the profile than the "full-face."
Nevertheless, nothing could be more clearly indicated than that the hair
of M. Melihac was very yellow, and his short, huge-lapeiled waistcoat
white, striped with scarlet. An enormous cravat coyered his chin; the
heavy collar of his yellow coat rose behind his ears, while its tails fell
to his ankles; and the tight trousers of white and yellow stripes were
tied with white ribbons about the middle of the calf; he wore white
stockings and gold-buckled yellow shoes, and on the back of his head a
jauntily cocked black hat. Miss Betty innocently wondered why his
letters did not speak of P‚tion, of Vergniaud, or of Dumoriez, since in
the historical novels which she read, the hero's lot was inevitably linked
with that of everyone of importance in his generation; yet Georges
appeared to have been unacquainted with these personages,
Robespierre being the only name of consequence mentioned in his
letters; and then it appeared in much the same fashion practised by her
father in alluding to the Governor of the State, who had the misfortune
to be unpopular with Mr. Carewe. But this did not dim her great-uncle's
lustre in Miss Betty's eyes, nor lessen for her the pathetic romance of
the smile he wore.

Beholding this smile, one remembered the end to which his light
footsteps bad led him; and it was unavoidable to picture him left lying
in the empty street behind the heels of the flying crowd, carefully
forming that same smile on his lips, and taking much pride in passing
with some small, cynical speech, murmured to himself, concerning the
mutility of a gentleman's getting shot by his friends for merely being
present to applaud them. So, fancying him thus, with his yellow hair,
his scarlet- itriped waistcoat, and his tragedy, the young girl felt a share
of family greatness, or, at least, of picturesqueness, descend to her. And
she smiled sadly back upon the smile in the picture, and dreamed about
its original night after night.
Whether or no another figure, that of a dark young man in a white hat,
with a