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As my companion offered me this information I perceived Mr. Ruck come lounging in, with his hands in his pockets, and his elbows making acute angles. He had his usual anomalous appearance of both seeking and avoiding society, and he wandered obliquely toward Mrs. Church, whose last words he had overheard. “The seventeenth century schools,” he said, slowly, as if he were weighing some very small object in a very large-pair of scales. “Now, do you suppose they HAD schools at that period?”

Mrs. Church rose with a good deal of precision, making no answer to this incongruous jest. She clasped her large volume to her neat little bosom, and she fixed a gentle, serious eye upon Mr. Ruck.

“I had a letter this morning from Chamouni,” she said.

“Well,” replied Mr. Ruck, “I suppose you’ve got friends all over.”

“I have friends at Chamouni, but they are leaving. To their great regret.” I had got up, too; I listened to this statement, and I wondered. I am almost ashamed to mention the subject of my agitation. I asked myself whether this was a sudden improvisation, consecrated by maternal devotion; but this point has never been elucidated. “They are giving up some charming rooms; perhaps you would like them. I would suggest your telegraphing. The weather is glorious,” continued Mrs. Church, “and the highest peaks are now perceived with extraordinary distinctness.”

Mr. Ruck listened, as he always listened, respectfully. “Well,” he said, “I don’t know as I want to go up Mount Blank. That’s the principal attraction, isn’t it?”

“There are many others. I thought I would offer you an–an exceptional opportunity.”

“Well,” said Mr. Ruck, “you’re right down friendly. But I seem to have more opportunities than I know what to do with. I don’t seem able to take hold.”

“It only needs a little decision,” remarked Mrs. Church, with an air which was an admirable example of this virtue. “I wish you good- night, sir.” And she moved noiselessly away.

Mr. Ruck, with his long legs apart, stood staring after her; then he transferred his perfectly quiet eyes to me. “Does she own a hotel over there?” he asked. “Has she got any stock in Mount Blank?”

CHAPTER IX.

The next day Madame Beaurepas handed me, with her own elderly fingers, a missive, which proved to be a telegram. After glancing at it, I informed her that it was apparently a signal for my departure; my brother had arrived in England, and proposed to me to meet him there; he had come on business, and was to spend but three weeks in Europe. “But my house empties itself!” cried the old woman. “The famille Ruck talks of leaving me, and Madame Church nous fait la reverence.”

“Mrs. Church is going away?”

“She is packing her trunk; she is a very extraordinary person. Do you know what she asked me this morning? To invent some combination by which the famille Ruck should move away. I informed her that I was not an inventor. That poor famille Ruck! ‘Oblige me by getting rid of them,’ said Madame Church, as she would have asked Celestine to remove a dish of cabbage. She speaks as if the world were made for Madame Church. I intimated to her that if she objected to the company there was a very simple remedy; and at present elle fait ses paquets.”

“She really asked you to get the Rucks out of the house?”

“She asked me to tell them that their rooms had been let, three months ago, to another family. She has an APLOMB!”

Mrs. Church’s aplomb caused me considerable diversion; I am not sure that it was not, in some degree, to laugh over it at my leisure that I went out into the garden that evening to smoke a cigar. The night was dark and not particularly balmy, and most of my fellow- pensioners, after dinner, had remained in-doors. A long straight walk conducted from the door of the house to the ancient grille that I have described, and I stood here for some time, looking through the iron bars at the silent empty street. The prospect was not entertaining, and I presently turned away. At this moment I saw, in the distance, the door of the house open and throw a shaft of lamplight into the darkness. Into the lamplight there stepped the figure of a female, who presently closed the door behind her. She disappeared in the dusk of the garden, and I had seen her but for an instant, but I remained under the impression that Aurora Church, on the eve of her departure, had come out for a meditative stroll.