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She had taken a strong feminine dislike to Madame la Mere.

“She makes her family miserable,” she said. “She drags them from place to place. Possibly there is a lover,–more possibly than not. The girl’s eyes wore a peculiar look,–as if they searched for something far away.”

She had scarcely concluded her charming little harangue when we reached our destination; but, as we passed through the entrance, she paused to speak to the curly-headed child of the concierge whose mother held him by the hand.

“We shall have new arrivals to-morrow,” said the good woman, who was always ready for friendly gossip. “The apartment upon the first floor,” and she nodded to me significantly, and with good-natured encouragement. “Perhaps you may get pupils,” she added. “They are Americans, and speak only English, and there is a young lady, Madame says.”

“Americans!” exclaimed Clelie, with sudden interest.

“Americans,” answered the concierge. “It was Madame who came. Mon Dieu! it was wonderful! So rich and so–so”–filling up the blank by a shrug of deep meaning.

“It cannot have been long since they were–peasants,” her voice dropping into a cautious whisper.

“Why not our friends of the Louvre?” said Clelie as we went on up-stairs.

“Why not?” I replied. “It is very possible.”

The next day there arrived at the house numberless trunks of large dimensions, superintended by the small angry woman and a maid. An hour later came a carriage, from whose door emerged the young lady and her father. Both looked pale and fagged; both were led up-stairs in the midst of voluble comments and commands by the mother; and both, entering the apartment, seemed swallowed up by it, as we saw and heard nothing further of them. Clelie was indignant.

“It is plain that the mother overwhelms them,” she said. “A girl of that age should speak and be interested in any novelty. This one would be if she were not wretched. And the poor little husband!”–

“My dear,” I remarked, “you are a feminine Bayard. You engage yourself with such ardor in everybody’s wrongs.”

When I returned from my afternoon’s work a few days later, I found Clelie again excited. She had been summoned to the first floor by Madame.

“I went into the room,” said Clelie, “and found the mother and daughter together. Mademoiselle, who stood by the fire, had evidently been weeping Madame was in an abrupt and angry mood. She wasted no words. ‘I want you to give her lessons,’ she said, making an ungraceful gesture in the direction of her daughter. ‘What do you charge a lesson?’ And on my telling her, she engaged me at once. ‘It’s a great deal, but I guess I can pay as well as other people,’ she remarked.”

A few of the lessons were given downstairs, and then Clelie preferred a request to Madame.

“If you will permit Mademoiselle to come to my room, you will confer a favor upon me,” she said.

Fortunately, her request was granted, and so I used afterward to come home and find Mademoiselle Esmeralda in our little salon at work disconsolately and tremulously. She found it difficult to hold her pencil in the correct manner, and one morning she let it drop, and burst into tears.

“Don’t you see I’ll never do it!” she answered, miserably. “Don’t you see I couldn’t, even if my heart was in it, and it aint at all!”

She held out her little hands piteously for Clelie to look at. They were well enough shaped, and would have been pretty if they had not been robbed of their youthful suppleness by labor.

“I’ve been used to work,” she said, “rough work all my life, and my hands aint like yours.”

“But you must not be discouraged, Mademoiselle,” said Clelie gently. “Time”–

“Time,” interposed the girl, with a frightened look in her pretty gray eyes. “That’s what I can’t bear to think of–the time that’s to come.”

This was the first of many outbursts of confidence. Afterward she related to Clelie, with the greatest naivete, the whole history of the family affairs.