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“In want of yours, you mean?”

“Of any that he could get–honestly. Mine was the only money.”

“And he has taken yours?”

She hesitated again a moment, but her glance, meanwhile, was pleading. “I gave him what I had.”

I have always remembered the accent of those words as the most angelic bit of human utterance I had ever listened to; but then, almost with a sense of personal outrage, I jumped up. “Good heavens!” I said, “do you call that getting, it honestly?”

I had gone too far; she blushed deeply. “We will not speak of it,” she said.

“We must speak of it,” I answered, sitting down again. “I am your friend; it seems to me you need one. What is the matter with your cousin?”

“He is in debt.”

“No doubt! But what is the special fitness of your paying his debts?”

“He has told me all his story; I am very sorry for him.”

“So am I! But I hope he will give you back your money.”

“Certainly he will; as soon as he can.”

“When will that be?”

“When he has finished his great picture.”

“My dear young lady, confound his great picture! Where is this desperate cousin?”

She certainly hesitated now. Then,–“At his dinner,” she answered.

I turned about and looked through the open door into the salle a manger. There, alone at the end of a long table, I perceived the object of Miss Spencer’s compassion, the bright young art-student. He was dining too attentively to notice me at first; but in the act of setting down a well-emptied wineglass he caught sight of my observant attitude. He paused in his repast, and, with his head on one side and his meagre jaws slowly moving, fixedly returned my gaze. Then the landlady came lightly brushing by with her pyramid of apricots.

“And that nice little plate of fruit is for him?” I exclaimed.

Miss Spencer glanced at it tenderly. “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?”