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They had been the possessors of some barren mountain lands in North Carolina, and her description of their former life was wonderful indeed to the ears of the Parisian. She herself had been brought up with marvelous simplicity and hardihood, barely learning to read and write, and in absolute ignorance of society. A year ago iron had been discovered upon their property, and the result had been wealth and misery for father and daughter. The mother, who had some vague fancies of the attractions of the great outside world, was ambitious and restless. Monsieur, who was a mild and accommodating person, could only give way before her stronger will.

“She always had her way with us,” said Mademoiselle Esmeralda, scratching nervously upon the paper before her with her pencil, at this part of the relation. “We did not want to leave home, neither me nor father, and father said more than I ever heard him say before at one time. ‘Mother,’ says he, ‘let me an’ Esmeraldy stay at home, an’ you go an’ enjoy your tower. You’ve had more schoolin’ an’ you’ll be more at home than we should. You’re useder to city ways, havin’ lived in ‘Lizabethville.’ But it only vexed her. People in town had been talking to her about traveling and letting me learn things, and she’d set her mind on it.”

She was very simple and unsophisticated. To the memory of her former truly singular life she clung with unshaken fidelity. She recurred to it constantly. The novelty and luxury of her new existence seemed to have no attractions for her. One thing even my Clelie found incomprehensible, while she fancied she understood the rest–she did not appear to be moved to pleasure even by our beloved Paris.

“It is a true maladie du pays,” Clelie remarked to me. “And that is not all.”

Nor was it all. One day the whole truth was told amid a flood of tears.

“I–I was going to be married,” cried the poor child. “I was to have been married the week the ore was found. I was–all ready, and mother–mother shut right down on us.”

Clelie glanced at me in amazed questioning.

“It is a kind of argot which belongs only to Americans,” I answered in an undertone. “The alliance was broken off.”

“Ciel!” exclaimed my Clelie between her small shut teeth. “The woman is a fiend!”

She was wholly absorbed in her study of this unworldly and untaught nature. She was full of sympathy for its trials and tenderness, and for its pain.

Even the girl’s peculiarities of speech were full of interest to her. She made serious and intelligent efforts to understand them, as if she studied a new language.

“It is not common argot,” she said. “It has its subtleties. One continually finds somewhere an original idea–sometimes even a bon mot, which startles one by its pointedness. As you say, however, it belongs only to the Americans and their remarkable country. A French mind can only arrive at its climaxes through a grave and occasionally tedious research, which would weary most persons, but which, however, does not weary me.”

The confidence of Mademoiselle Esmeralda was easily won. She became attached to us both, and particularly to Clelie. When her mother was absent or occupied, she stole up-stairs to our apartment and spent with us the moments of leisure chance afforded her. She liked our rooms, she told my wife, because they were small, and our society, because we were “clever,” which we discovered afterward meant “amiable.” But she was always pale and out of spirits. She would sit before our fire silent and abstracted.

“You must not mind if I don’t talk,” she would say. “I can’t; and it seems to help me to get to sit and think about things–Mother won’t let me do it down-stairs.”

We became also familiar with the father. One day I met him upon the staircase, and to my amazement he stopped as if he wished to address me. I raised my hat and bade him good-morning. On his part he drew forth a large handkerchief and began to rub the palms of his hands with awkward timidity.