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“I see you have a great deal of eye,” I replied. “Your cousin tells me you are studying art.” He looked at me in the same way without answering, and I went on with deliberate urbanity, “I suppose you are at the studio of one of those great men.”

Still he looked at me, and then he said softly, “Gerome.”

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“Do you understand French?” he said.

“Some kinds,” I answered.

He kept his little eyes on me; then he said, “J’adore la peinture!”

“Oh, I understand that kind!” I rejoined. Miss Spencer laid her hand upon her cousin’s arm with a little pleased and fluttered movement; it was delightful to be among people who were on such easy terms with foreign tongues. I got up to take leave, and asked Miss Spencer where, in Paris, I might have the honor of waiting upon her. To what hotel would she go?

She turned to her cousin inquiringly, and he honored me again with his little languid leer. “Do you know the Hotel des Princes?”

“I know where it is.”

“I shall take her there.”

“I congratulate you,” I said to Caroline Spencer. “I believe it is the best inn in the world; and in case I should still have a moment to call upon you here, where are you lodged?”

“Oh, it’s such a pretty name,” said Miss Spencer gleefully. “A la Belle Normande.”

As I left them her cousin gave me a great flourish with his picturesque hat.

III.

My sister, as it proved, was not sufficiently restored to leave Havre by the afternoon train; so that, as the autumn dusk began to fall, I found myself at liberty to call at the sign of the Fair Norman. I must confess that I had spent much of the interval in wondering what the disagreeable thing was that my charming friend’s disagreeable cousin had been telling her. The “Belle Normande” was a modest inn in a shady bystreet, where it gave me satisfaction to think Miss Spencer must have encountered local color in abundance. There was a crooked little court, where much of the hospitality of the house was carried on; there was a staircase climbing to bedrooms on the outer side of the wall; there was a small trickling fountain with a stucco statuette in the midst of it; there was a little boy in a white cap and apron cleaning copper vessels at a conspicuous kitchen door; there was a chattering landlady, neatly laced, arranging apricots and grapes into an artistic pyramid upon a pink plate. I looked about, and on a green bench outside of an open door labelled Salle a Manger, I perceived Caroline Spencer. No sooner had I looked at her than I saw that something had happened since the morning. She was leaning back on her bench, her hands were clasped in her lap, and her eyes were fixed upon the landlady, at the other side of the court, manipulating her apricots.

But I saw she was not thinking of apricots. She was staring absently, thoughtfully; as I came near her I perceived that she had been crying. I sat down on the bench beside her before she saw me; then, when she had done so, she simply turned round, without surprise, and rested her sad eyes upon me. Something very bad indeed had happened; she was completely changed.

I immediately charged her with it. “Your cousin has been giving you bad news; you are in great distress.”

For a moment she said nothing, and I supposed that she was afraid to speak, lest her tears should come back. But presently I perceived that in the short time that had elapsed since my leaving her in the morning she had shed them all, and that she was now softly stoical, intensely composed.

“My poor cousin is in distress,” she said at last. “His news was bad.” Then, after a brief hesitation, “He was in terrible want of money.”