"Her story is known to me," Mademoiselle Thérèse explained on the way to her house, "and I will tell it you—in confidence, of course." She paused a moment to impress Barbara and to arrange her thoughts, for she dearly loved a romantic tale, and would add by the way if she did not consider it had enough.
"She is the daughter of a professor," she began presently. "They used to live in Rouen—gray, beautiful, many-churched Rouen." The lady glanced sideways at her companion to see if her were impressive enough, and Barbara waited gravely for her to continue, though wondering if mademoiselle had ever read The Lady of Shalott.
"An officer in one of the stationed in the old town," pursued mademoiselle, "saw the professor's fair young daughter, and fell rapturously in love with her. Whereupon they became ."
Barbara frowned a little. The setting of the story was too ornate, and seemed almost barbarous.
"And then?" she asked impatiently.
"Then—ah, then!" sighed the story-teller, who thought she was making a great impression—"then the sorrow came. As soon as his family knew, they were grievously angry, furiously wrathful, because she had no dot; and when she heard of their fury and she nobly refused to marry him until he gained their consent. 'Never,' she cried" (and it was obvious that here mademoiselle was relying on her own invention), "'never will I marry thee against thy parents' wish.'"
She paused, and drew a long breath before . "A short time after this, the of her lover was ordered out to India, in which pestiferous country he took a fever and expired. She has no relatives left now, though so and delicate, but lives with an old maid in a very small domicile. She is cultivated to an extreme, and is so fond of music that, though her house is too small to admit of the pianoforte entering by the door, she had it introduced by the window of the salon, which had to be unbricked—the window, I mean. She has, moreover, three violins—one of which belonged to her ever-to-be-lamented fiancé—and, though she is too frail to stand, she will sit, when her health permits, and make music for hours together."
Mademoiselle Thérèse uttered the last words on the threshold of the house, and Barbara did not know whether to laugh or to cry at such a story being told in such a way. The door was opened by the old maid, Jeannette, who wore a quaint mob cap and spotless , and who followed the visitors into the room, and, having introduced them to her mistress, seated herself in one corner and took up her knitting as "company," Mademoiselle Thérèse whispered to Barbara.
The latter thought she had never before seen such a charming old lady as Mademoiselle Viré, who now rose to greet them, and she wondered how any one who had known her in the "many-churched Rouen days" could have parted from her.
She talked for a little while to Mademoiselle Thérèse, then turned gently to Barbara.
"Do you play, mademoiselle?"
"A little," the girl returned hesitatingly; "not enough, I'm afraid, to give great pleasure."
But Mademoiselle Viré rose with flushed cheeks.
"Ah! then, will you do me the kindness to play some accompaniments? That is one of the few things my good Jeannette cannot do for me," and almost before Barbara realised it she was sitting on a high-backed chair before the piano in the little salon, while Mademoiselle Viré sought eagerly for her music.
The room was so small that, with Mademoiselle Thérèse and the maid Jeannette—who seemed to be expected to follow her mistress—there seemed hardly room to move in it, and Barbara was all the more nervous by the nearness of her audience.
It certainly was rather anxious work, for though the little lady was charmingly , she would not allow a passage played wrongly to go without correction. "I think we were not quite together there—were we?" she would say. "May we play it through again?" and Barbara would blush up to her hair, for she knew the violinist had played her part . She enjoyed it, though, in spite of her nervousness, and was sorry when it was time to go.
"You will come again, I hope?" her hostess asked. "You have given me a happy time." Then turning eagerly to Jeannette, she added, "Did I play well to-day, Jeannette?"
The quaint old maid rose at once from her seat at the door, and came across the room to put her mistress's cap straight.
"Madame played better than I have ever heard her," she replied.
Barbara had been so pleased with everything that she went again a few days later by herself, and this time was led into the garden, which, like the house, was very small, but full of roses and other sweet-smelling things. Madame—for Barbara noticed that most people seemed to call her so—was busy watering her flowers, and had on big gloves and an apron. When she saw the girl coming, she came forward to welcome her, saying, with a deprecatory movement towards her apron—
"But this apron!—These gloves! Had I known it was you, mademoiselle, I should have changed them and made myself seemly. Why did you not warn me, Jeannette?"
"Madame should not work in the garden and heat herself," the old woman said
