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Raymond had but a vague idea of who the people were who had come to bid Cousin Maria farewell, and he had no wish for a sharper one, though she introduced him, very definitely, to the whole group. She might make light of him in her secret soul, but she would never put herself in the wrong by omitting the smallest form. Fortunately, however, he was not obliged to like all her forms, and he foresaw the day when she would abandon this particular one. She was not so well made up in advance about Paris but that it would be in reserve for her to detest the period when she had thought it proper to ‘introduce all round.’ Raymond detested it already, and tried to make Dora understand that he wished her to take a walk with him in the corridors. There was a gentleman with a curl on his forehead who especially displeased him; he made childish jokes, at which the others laughed all at once, as if they had rehearsed for it–jokes a la portee of Effie and Tishy and mainly about them. These two joined in the merriment, as if they followed perfectly, as indeed they might, and gave a small sigh afterward, with a little factitious air. Dora remained grave, almost sad; it was when she was different, in this way, that he felt how much he liked her. He hated, in general, a large ring of people who had drawn up chairs in the public room of an hotel: some one was sure to undertake to be funny.

He succeeded at last in drawing Dora away; he endeavoured to give the movement a casual air. There was nothing peculiar, after all, in their walking a little in the passage; a dozen other persons were doing the same. The girl had the air of not suspecting in the least that he could have anything particular to say to her–of responding to his appeal simply out of her general gentleness. It was not in her companion’s interest that her mind should be such a blank; nevertheless his conviction that in spite of the ministrations of Mademoiselle Bourde she was not falsely ingenuous made him repeat to himself that he would still make her his own. They took several turns in the hall, during which it might still have appeared to Dora Temperly that her cousin Raymond had nothing particular to say to her. He remarked several times that he should certainly turn up in Paris in the spring; but when once she had replied that she was very glad that subject seemed exhausted. The young man cared little, however; it was not a question now of making any declaration: he only wanted to be with her. Suddenly, when they were at the end of the corridor furthest removed from the room they had left, he said to her: ‘Your mother is very strange. Why has she got such an idea about Paris?’

‘How do you mean, such an idea?’ He had stopped, making the girl stand there before him.

‘Well, she thinks so much of it without having ever seen it, or really knowing anything. She appears to have planned out such a great life there.’

‘She thinks it’s the best place,’ Dora rejoined, with the dim smile that always charmed our young man.

‘The best place for what?’

‘Well, to learn French.’ The girl continued to smile.

‘Do you mean for her? She’ll never learn it; she can’t.’

‘No; for us. And other things.’

‘You know it already. And you know other things,’ said Raymond.

‘She wants us to know them better–better than any girls know them.’

‘I don’t know what things you mean,’ exclaimed the young man, rather impatiently.

‘Well, we shall see,’ Dora returned, laughing.

He said nothing for a minute, at the end of which he resumed: ‘I hope you won’t be offended if I say that it seems curious your mother should have such aspirations–such Napoleonic plans. I mean being just a quiet little lady from California, who has never seen any of the kind of thing that she has in her head.’