The Europeans, by Henry James

Part 2 out of 4

which the narrator of these incidents will be able to charge him.

"A three days' visit at most, over there, is all I should
have found possible," Madame Munster remarked to her brother,
after they had taken possession of the little white house.
"It would have been too intime--decidedly too intime.
Breakfast, dinner, and tea en famille--it would have been the end
of the world if I could have reached the third day." And she made
the same observation to her maid Augustine, an intelligent person,
who enjoyed a liberal share of her confidence. Felix declared that
he would willingly spend his life in the bosom of the Wentworth family;
that they were the kindest, simplest, most amiable people in
the world, and that he had taken a prodigious fancy to them all.
The Baroness quite agreed with him that they were simple and kind;
they were thoroughly nice people, and she liked them extremely.
The girls were perfect ladies; it was impossible to be more of a lady
than Charlotte Wentworth, in spite of her little village air.
"But as for thinking them the best company in the world,"
said the Baroness, "that is another thing; and as for wishing to live
porte ; aga porte with them, I should as soon think of wishing myself
back in the convent again, to wear a bombazine apron and sleep
in a dormitory." And yet the Baroness was in high good humor;
she had been very much pleased. With her lively perception
and her refined imagination, she was capable of enjoying anything
that was characteristic, anything that was good of its kind.
The Wentworth household seemed to her very perfect in its kind--
wonderfully peaceful and unspotted; pervaded by a sort of dove-colored
freshness that had all the quietude and benevolence of what she
deemed to be Quakerism, and yet seemed to be founded upon a degree
of material abundance for which, in certain matters of detail,
one might have looked in vain at the frugal little court of
Silberstadt-Schreckenstein. She perceived immediately that her
American relatives thought and talked very little about money;
and this of itself made an impression upon Eugenia's imagination.
She perceived at the same time that if Charlotte or Gertrude should ask
their father for a very considerable sum he would at once place it
in their hands; and this made a still greater impression. The greatest
impression of all, perhaps, was made by another rapid induction.
The Baroness had an immediate conviction that Robert Acton would put
his hand into his pocket every day in the week if that rattle-pated
little sister of his should bid him. The men in this country,
said the Baroness, are evidently very obliging. Her declaration that she
was looking for rest and retirement had been by no means wholly untrue;
nothing that the Baroness said was wholly untrue. It is but fair
to add, perhaps, that nothing that she said was wholly true.
She wrote to a friend in Germany that it was a return to nature;
it was like drinking new milk, and she was very fond of new milk.
She said to herself, of course, that it would be a little dull;
but there can be no better proof of her good spirits than the fact
that she thought she should not mind its being a little dull.
It seemed to her, when from the piazza of her eleemosynary cottage
she looked out over the soundless fields, the stony pastures,
the clear-faced ponds, the rugged little orchards, that she had
never been in the midst of so peculiarly intense a stillness;
it was almost a delicate sensual pleasure. It was all very good,
very innocent and safe, and out of it something good must come.
Augustine, indeed, who had an unbounded faith in her mistress's wisdom
and far-sightedness, was a great deal perplexed and depressed.
She was always ready to take her cue when she understood it; but she
liked to understand it, and on this occasion comprehension failed.
What, indeed, was the Baroness doing dans cette galere? what fish
did she expect to land out of these very stagnant waters?
The game was evidently a deep one. Augustine could trust her;
but the sense of walking in the dark betrayed itself in the
physiognomy of this spare, sober, sallow, middle-aged person,
who had nothing in common with Gertrude Wentworth's conception
of a soubrette, by the most ironical scowl that had ever rested upon
the unpretending tokens of the peace and plenty of the Wentworths.
Fortunately, Augustine could quench skepticism in action.
She quite agreed with her mistress--or rather she quite out-stripped
her mistress--in thinking that the little white house was pitifully bare.
"Il faudra," said Augustine, "lui faire un peu de toilette.
" And she began to hang up portieres in the doorways; to place
wax candles, procured after some research, in unexpected situations;
to dispose anomalous draperies over the arms of sofas and the backs
of chairs. The Baroness had brought with her to the New World
a copious provision of the element of costume; and the two
Miss Wentworths, when they came over to see her, were somewhat
bewildered by the obtrusive distribution of her wardrobe.
There were India shawls suspended, curtain-wise, in the parlor door,
and curious fabrics, corresponding to Gertrude's metaphysical
vision of an opera-cloak, tumbled about in the sitting-places.
There were pink silk blinds in the windows, by which the room
was strangely bedimmed; and along the chimney-piece was disposed
a remarkable band of velvet, covered with coarse, dirty-looking lace.
"I have been making myself a little comfortable," said the Baroness,
much to the confusion of Charlotte, who had been on the point of
proposing to come and help her put her superfluous draperies away.
But what Charlotte mistook for an almost culpably delayed subsidence
Gertrude very presently perceived to be the most ingenious,
the most interesting, the most romantic intention.
"What is life, indeed, without curtains?" she secretly asked herself;
and she appeared to herself to have been leading hitherto an existence
singularly garish and totally devoid of festoons.

Felix was not a young man who troubled himself greatly about anything--
least of all about the conditions of enjoyment. His faculty of
enjoyment was so large, so unconsciously eager, that it may be said
of it that it had a permanent advance upon embarrassment and sorrow.
His sentient faculty was intrinsically joyous, and novelty and change
were in themselves a delight to him. As they had come to him
with a great deal of frequency, his life had been more agreeable
than appeared. Never was a nature more perfectly fortunate.
It was not a restless, apprehensive, ambitious spirit, running a race
with the tyranny of fate, but a temper so unsuspicious as to put
Adversity off her guard, dodging and evading her with the easy,
natural motion of a wind-shifted flower. Felix extracted
entertainment from all things, and all his faculties--his imagination,
his intelligence, his affections, his senses--had a hand in the game.
It seemed to him that Eugenia and he had been very well treated; there was
something absolutely touching in that combination of paternal liberality
and social considerateness which marked Mr. Wentworth's deportment.
It was most uncommonly kind of him, for instance, to have given them
a house. Felix was positively amused at having a house of his own;
for the little white cottage among the apple-trees--the chalet,
as Madame Munster always called it--was much more sensibly his own than
any domiciliary quatrieme, looking upon a court, with the rent overdue.
Felix had spent a good deal of his life in looking into courts,
with a perhaps slightly tattered pair of elbows resting upon the ledge
of a high-perched window, and the thin smoke of a cigarette rising
into an atmosphere in which street-cries died away and the vibration
of chimes from ancient belfries became sensible. He had never
known anything so infinitely rural as these New England fields;
and he took a great fancy to all their pastoral roughnesses.
He had never had a greater sense of luxurious security; and at
the risk of making him seem a rather sordid adventurer I must declare
that he found an irresistible charm in the fact that he might dine
every day at his uncle's. The charm was irresistible, however,
because his fancy flung a rosy light over this homely privilege.
He appreciated highly the fare that was set before him.
There was a kind of fresh-looking abundance about it which made
him think that people must have lived so in the mythological era,
when they spread their tables upon the grass, replenished them
from cornucopias, and had no particular need of kitchen stoves.
But the great thing that Felix enjoyed was having found a family--
sitting in the midst of gentle, generous people whom he might
call by their first names. He had never known anything
more charming than the attention they paid to what he said.
It was like a large sheet of clean, fine-grained drawing-paper,
all ready to be washed over with effective splashes of water-color.
He had never had any cousins, and he had never before found
himself in contact so unrestricted with young unmarried ladies.
He was extremely fond of the society of ladies, and it was
new to him that it might be enjoyed in just this manner.
At first he hardly knew what to make of his state of mind.
It seemed to him that he was in love, indiscriminately, with three
girls at once. He saw that Lizzie Acton was more brilliantly pretty
than Charlotte and Gertrude; but this was scarcely a superiority.
His pleasure came from something they had in common--a part of
which was, indeed, that physical delicacy which seemed to make it proper
that they should always dress in thin materials and clear colors.
But they were delicate in other ways, and it was most agreeable to him
to feel that these latter delicacies were appreciable by contact,
as it were. He had known, fortunately, many virtuous gentlewomen,
but it now appeared to him that in his relations with them (especially when
they were unmarried) he had been looking at pictures under glass.
He perceived at present what a nuisance the glass had been--
how it perverted and interfered, how it caught the reflection of other
objects and kept you walking from side to side. He had no need
to ask himself whether Charlotte and Gertrude, and Lizzie Acton,
were in the right light; they were always in the right light.
He liked everything about them: he was, for instance, not at all above
liking the fact that they had very slender feet and high insteps.
He liked their pretty noses; he liked their surprised eyes
and their hesitating, not at all positive way of speaking;
he liked so much knowing that he was perfectly at liberty to be alone
for hours, anywhere, with either of them; that preference for one
to the other, as a companion of solitude, remained a minor affair.
Charlotte Wentworth's sweetly severe features were as agreeable
as Lizzie Acton's wonderfully expressive blue eyes; and Gertrude's
air of being always ready to walk about and listen was as charming
as anything else, especially as she walked very gracefully.
After a while Felix began to distinguish; but even then he would
often wish, suddenly, that they were not all so sad. Even Lizzie Acton,
in spite of her fine little chatter and laughter, appeared sad.
Even Clifford Wentworth, who had extreme youth in his favor,
and kept a buggy with enormous wheels and a little sorrel mare
with the prettiest legs in the world--even this fortunate lad
was apt to have an averted, uncomfortable glance, and to edge away
from you at times, in the manner of a person with a bad conscience.
The only person in the circle with no sense of oppression of any
kind was, to Felix's perception, Robert Acton.

It might perhaps have been feared that after the completion
of those graceful domiciliary embellishments which have
been mentioned Madame M; auunster would have found herself
confronted with alarming possibilities of ennui. But as yet
she had not taken the alarm. The Baroness was a restless soul,
and she projected her restlessness, as it may be said,
into any situation that lay before her. Up to a certain point
her restlessness might be counted upon to entertain her.
She was always expecting something to happen, and, until it
was disappointed, expectancy itself was a delicate pleasure.
What the Baroness expected just now it would take some
ingenuity to set forth; it is enough that while she looked
about her she found something to occupy her imagination.
She assured herself that she was enchanted with her new relatives;
she professed to herself that, like her brother, she felt it a sacred
satisfaction to have found a family. It is certain that she
enjoyed to the utmost the gentleness of her kinsfolk's deference.
She had, first and last, received a great deal of admiration,
and her experience of well-turned compliments was very considerable;
but she knew that she had never been so real a power, never counted
for so much, as now when, for the first time, the standard
of comparison of her little circle was a prey to vagueness.
The sense, indeed, that the good people about her had,
as regards her remarkable self, no standard of comparison
at all gave her a feeling of almost illimitable power.
It was true, as she said to herself, that if for this reason
they would be able to discover nothing against her, so they
would perhaps neglect to perceive some of her superior points;
but she always wound up her reflections by declaring that she
would take care of that.

Charlotte and Gertrude were in some perplexity between their desire
to show all proper attention to Madame Munster and their fear of
being importunate. The little house in the orchard had hitherto been
occupied during the summer months by intimate friends of the family,
or by poor relations who found in Mr. Wentworth a landlord attentive
to repairs and oblivious of quarter-day. Under these circumstances
the open door of the small house and that of the large one, facing each
other across their homely gardens, levied no tax upon hourly visits.
But the Misses Wentworth received an impression that Eugenia was no
friend to the primitive custom of "dropping in;" she evidently had
no idea of living without a door-keeper. "One goes into your house
as into an inn--except that there are no servants rushing forward,"
she said to Charlotte. And she added that that was very charming.
Gertrude explained to her sister that she meant just the reverse;
she did n't like it at all. Charlotte inquired why she should tell
an untruth, and Gertrude answered that there was probably some very good
reason for it which they should discover when they knew her better.
"There can surely be no good reason for telling an untruth," said Charlotte.
"I hope she does not think so."

They had of course desired, from the first, to do everything
in the way of helping her to arrange herself. It had seemed
to Charlotte that there would be a great many things to talk about;
but the Baroness was apparently inclined to talk about nothing.

"Write her a note, asking her leave to come and see her.
I think that is what she will like," said Gertrude.

"Why should I give her the trouble of answering me?" Charlotte asked.
"She will have to write a note and send it over."

"I don't think she will take any trouble," said Gertrude, profoundly.

"What then will she do?"

"That is what I am curious to see," said Gertrude, leaving her sister
with an impression that her curiosity was morbid.

They went to see the Baroness without preliminary correspondence;
and in the little salon which she had already created, with its
becoming light and its festoons, they found Robert Acton.

Eugenia was intensely gracious, but she accused them of neglecting
her cruelly. "You see Mr. Acton has had to take pity upon me," she said.
"My brother goes off sketching, for

hours; I can never depend upon him. So I was to send Mr. Acton to beg
you to come and give me the benefit of your wisdom."

Gertrude looked at her sister. She wanted to say, "That is what she would
have done." Charlotte said that they hoped the Baroness would always come
and dine with them; it would give them so much pleasure; and, in that case,
she would spare herself the trouble of having a cook.

"Ah, but I must have a cook!" cried the Baroness. "An old
negress in a yellow turban. I have set my heart upon that.
I want to look out of my window and see her sitting there
on the grass, against the background of those crooked,
dusky little apple-trees, pulling the husks off a lapful
of Indian corn. That will be local color, you know.
There is n't much of it here--you don't mind my saying that,
do you?--so one must make the most of what one can get.
I shall be most happy to dine with you whenever you
will let me; but I want to be able to ask you sometimes.
And I want to be able to ask Mr. Acton," added the Baroness.

"You must come and ask me at home," said Acton.
"You must come and see me; you must dine with me first.
I want to show you my place; I want to introduce you to my mother."
He called again upon Madame M; auunster, two days later.
He was constantly at the other house; he used to walk across
the fields from his own place, and he appeared to have fewer
scruples than his cousins with regard to dropping in.
On this occasion he found that Mr. Brand had come to pay his
respects to the charming stranger; but after Acton's arrival
the young theologian said nothing. He sat in his chair
with his two hands clasped, fixing upon his hostess a grave,
fascinated stare. The Baroness talked to Robert Acton, but,
as she talked, she turned and smiled at Mr. Brand, who never
took his eyes off her. The two men walked away together;
they were going to Mr. Wentworth's. Mr. Brand still said nothing;
but after they had passed into Mr. Wentworth's garden he stopped
and looked back for some time at the little white house.
Then, looking at his companion, with his head bent a little to one
side and his eyes somewhat contracted, "Now I suppose that 's
what is called conversation," he said; "real conversation."

"It 's what I call a very clever woman," said Acton, laughing.

"It is most interesting," Mr. Brand continued. "I only wish
she would speak French; it would seem more in keeping.
It must be quite the style that we have heard about, that we
have read about--the style of conversation of Madame de Stael,
of Madame Recamier."

Acton also looked at Madame Munster's residence among its
hollyhocks and apple-trees. "What I should like to know,"
he said, smiling, "is just what has brought Madame Recamier
to live in that place!"

CHAPTER V

Mr. Wentworth, with his cane and his gloves in his hand,
went every afternoon to call upon his niece. A couple of hours
later she came over to the great house to tea. She had let
the proposal that she should regularly dine there fall to the ground;
she was in the enjoyment of whatever satisfaction was to be
derived from the spectacle of an old negress in a crimson turban
shelling peas under the apple-trees. Charlotte, who had provided
the ancient negress, thought it must be a strange household,
Eugenia having told her that Augustine managed everything,
the ancient negress included--Augustine who was naturally devoid
of all acquaintance with the expurgatory English tongue.
By far the most immoral sentiment which I shall have occasion
to attribute to Charlotte Wentworth was a certain emotion of
disappointment at finding that, in spite of these irregular conditions,
the domestic arrangements at the small house were apparently not--
from Eugenia's peculiar point of view--strikingly offensive.
The Baroness found it amusing to go to tea; she dressed as if for dinner.
The tea-table offered an anomalous and picturesque repast;
and on leaving it they all sat and talked in the large piazza,
or wandered about the garden in the starlight, with their ears full
of those sounds of strange insects which, though they are supposed
to be, all over the world, a part of the magic of summer nights,
seemed to the Baroness to have beneath these western skies
an incomparable resonance.

Mr. Wentworth, though, as I say, he went punctiliously to call
upon her, was not able to feel that he was getting used to his niece.
It taxed his imagination to believe that she was really his
half-sister's child. His sister was a figure of his early years;
she had been only twenty when she went abroad, never to return,
making in foreign parts a willful and undesirable marriage.
His aunt, Mrs. Whiteside, who had taken her to Europe for the benefit
of the tour, gave, on her return, so lamentable an account
of Mr. Adolphus Young, to whom the headstrong girl had united
her destiny, that it operated as a chill upon family feeling--
especially in the case of the half-brothers. Catherine
had done nothing subsequently to propitiate her family;
she had not even written to them in a way that indicated a lucid
appreciation of their suspended sympathy; so that it had become
a tradition in Boston circles that the highest charity,
as regards this young lady, was to think it well to forget her,
and to abstain from conjecture as to the extent to which
her aberrations were reproduced in her descendants.
Over these young people--a vague report of their existence had
come to his ears--Mr. Wentworth had not, in the course of years,
allowed his imagination to hover. It had plenty of occupation
nearer home, and though he had many cares upon his conscience
the idea that he had been an unnatural uncle was, very properly,
never among the number. Now that his nephew and niece had come
before him, he perceived that they were the fruit of influences
and circumstances very different from those under which his own
familiar progeny had reached a vaguely-qualified maturity.
He felt no provocation to say that these influences had been
exerted for evil; but he was sometimes afraid that he should not
be able to like his distinguished, delicate, lady-like niece.
He was paralyzed and bewildered by her foreignness.
She spoke, somehow, a different language. There was something
strange in her words. He had a feeling that another man,
in his place, would accommodate himself to her tone; would ask
her questions and joke with her, reply to those pleasantries of her
own which sometimes seemed startling as addressed to an uncle.
But Mr. Wentworth could not do these things. He could not even
bring himself to attempt to measure her position in the world.
She was the wife of a foreign nobleman who desired to
repudiate her. This had a singular sound, but the old man
felt himself destitute of the materials for a judgment.
It seemed to him that he ought to find them in his own experience,
as a man of the world and an almost public character;
but they were not there, and he was ashamed to confess to himself--
much more to reveal to Eugenia by interrogations possibly
too innocent--the unfurnished condition of this repository.

It appeared to him that he could get much nearer, as he would have said,
to his nephew; though he was not sure that Felix was altogether safe.
He was so bright and handsome and talkative that it was impossible
not to think well of him; and yet it seemed as if there were something
almost impudent, almost vicious--or as if there ought to be--
in a young man being at once so joyous and so positive. It was to be
observed that while Felix was not at all a serious young man there
was somehow more of him--he had more weight and volume and resonance--
than a number of young men who were distinctly serious. While Mr. Wentworth
meditated upon this anomaly his nephew was admiring him unrestrictedly.
He thought him a most delicate, generous, high-toned old gentleman,
with a very handsome head, of the ascetic type, which he promised himself
the profit of sketching. Felix was far from having made a secret
of the fact that he wielded the paint-brush, and it was not his own
fault if it failed to be generally understood that he was prepared
to execute the most striking likenesses on the most reasonable terms.
"He is an artist--my cousin is an artist," said Gertrude;
and she offered this information to every one who would receive it.
She offered it to herself, as it were, by way of admonition and reminder;
she repeated to herself at odd moments, in lonely places,
that Felix was invested with this sacred character. Gertrude had
never seen an artist before; she had only read about such people.
They seemed to her a romantic and mysterious class, whose life was made
up of those agreeable accidents that never happened to other persons.
And it merely quickened her meditations on this point that Felix
should declare, as he repeatedly did, that he was really not an artist.
"I have never gone into the thing seriously," he said. "I have never studied;
I have had no training. I do a little of everything, and nothing well.
I am only an amateur."

It pleased Gertrude even more to think that he was an amateur
than to think that he was an artist; the former word, to her fancy,
had an even subtler connotation. She knew, however, that it
was a word to use more soberly. Mr. Wentworth used it freely;
for though he had not been exactly familiar with it, he found it
convenient as a help toward classifying Felix, who, as a young man
extremely clever and active and apparently respectable and yet not
engaged in any recognized business, was an importunate anomaly.
Of course the Baroness and her brother--she was always spoken of first--
were a welcome topic of conversation between Mr. Wentworth and his
daughters and their occasional visitors.

"And the young man, your nephew, what is his profession?"
asked an old gentleman--Mr. Broderip, of Salem--who had been
Mr. Wentworth's classmate at Harvard College in the year 1809,
and who came into his office in Devonshire Street.
(Mr. Wentworth, in his later years, used to go but three times
a week to his office, where he had a large amount of highly
confidential trust-business to transact.)

"Well, he 's an amateur," said Felix's uncle, with folded hands,
and with a certain satisfaction in being able to say it.
And Mr. Broderip had gone back to Salem with a feeling
that this was probably a "European" expression for a broker
or a grain exporter.

"I should like to do your head, sir," said Felix to his uncle one evening,
before them all--Mr. Brand and Robert Acton being also present.
"I think I should make a very fine thing of it. It 's an interesting head;
it 's very mediaeval."

Mr. Wentworth looked grave; he felt awkwardly, as if all the company had come
in and found him standing before the looking-glass. "The Lord made it,"
he said. "I don't think it is for man to make it over again."

"Certainly the Lord made it," replied Felix, laughing, "and he
made it very well. But life has been touching up the work.
It is a very interesting type of head. It 's delightfully
wasted and emaciated. The complexion is wonderfully bleached."
And Felix looked round at the circle, as if to call their attention
to these interesting points. Mr. Wentworth grew visibly paler.
"I should like to do you as an old prelate, an old cardinal,
or the prior of an order."

"A prelate, a cardinal?" murmured Mr. Wentworth.
"Do you refer to the Roman Catholic priesthood?"

"I mean an old ecclesiastic who should have led a very pure, abstinent life.
Now I take it that has been the case with you, sir; one sees it in your face,"
Felix proceeded. "You have been very--a very moderate. Don't you think
one always sees that in a man's face?"

"You see more in a man's face than I should think of looking for,"
said Mr. Wentworth coldly.

The Baroness rattled her fan, and gave her brilliant laugh.
"It is a risk to look so close!" she exclaimed.
"My uncle has some peccadilloes on his conscience."
Mr. Wentworth looked at her, painfully at a loss; and in so
far as the signs of a pure and abstinent life were visible
in his face they were then probably peculiarly manifest.
"You are a beau vieillard, dear uncle," said Madame M;
auunster, smiling with her foreign eyes.

"I think you are paying me a compliment," said the old man.

"Surely, I am not the first woman that ever did so!"
cried the Baroness.

"I think you are," said Mr. Wentworth gravely. And turning to Felix
he added, in the same tone, "Please don't take my likeness.
My children have my daguerreotype. That is quite satisfactory."

"I won't promise," said Felix, "not to work your head into something!"

Mr. Wentworth looked at him and then at all the others;
then he got up and slowly walked away.

"Felix," said Gertrude, in the silence that followed, "I wish you
would paint my portrait."

Charlotte wondered whether Gertrude was right in wishing this;
and she looked at Mr. Brand as the most legitimate way of ascertaining.
Whatever Gertrude did or said, Charlotte always looked at Mr. Brand.
It was a standing pretext for looking at Mr. Brand--always,
as Charlotte thought, in the interest of Gertrude's welfare.
It is true that she felt a tremulous interest in Gertrude being right;
for Charlotte, in her small, still way, was an heroic sister.

"We should be glad to have your portrait, Miss Gertrude,"
said Mr. Brand.

"I should be delighted to paint so charming a model," Felix declared.

"Do you think you are so lovely, my dear?" asked Lizzie Acton,
with her little inoffensive pertness, biting off a knot
in her knitting.

"It is not because I think I am beautiful," said Gertrude,
looking all round. "I don't think I am beautiful, at all."
She spoke with a sort of conscious deliberateness; and it seemed very
strange to Charlotte to hear her discussing this question so publicly.
"It is because I think it would be amusing to sit and be painted.
I have always thought that."

"I am sorry you have not had better things to think about, my daughter,"
said Mr. Wentworth.

"You are very beautiful, cousin Gertrude," Felix declared.

"That 's a compliment," said Gertrude. "I put all the compliments
I receive into a little money-jug that has a slit in the side.
I shake them up and down, and they rattle. There are not many yet--
only two or three."

"No, it 's not a compliment," Felix rejoined. "See; I am careful not to give
it the form of a compliment. I did n't think you were beautiful at first.
But you have come to seem so little by little."

"Take care, now, your jug does n't burst!" exclaimed Lizzie.

"I think sitting for one's portrait is only one of the various forms
of idleness," said Mr. Wentworth. "Their name is legion."

"My dear sir," cried Felix, "you can't be said to be idle when you
are making a man work so!"

"One might be painted while one is asleep," suggested Mr. Brand,
as a contribution to the discussion.

"Ah, do paint me while I am asleep," said Gertrude to Felix, smiling.
And she closed her eyes a little. It had by this time become a matter
of almost exciting anxiety to Charlotte what Gertrude would say or
would do next.

She began to sit for her portrait on the following day--
in the open air, on the north side of the piazza. "I wish
you would tell me what you think of us--how we seem to you,"
she said to Felix, as he sat before his easel.

"You seem to me the best people in the world," said Felix.

"You say that," Gertrude resumed, "because it saves you the trouble
of saying anything else."

The young man glanced at her over the top of his canvas.
"What else should I say? It would certainly be a great deal
of trouble to say anything different."

"Well," said Gertrude, "you have seen people before that you have liked,
have you not?"

"Indeed I have, thank Heaven!"

"And they have been very different from us," Gertrude went on.

"That only proves," said Felix, "that there are a thousand different
ways of being good company."

"Do you think us good company?" asked Gertrude.

"Company for a king!"

Gertrude was silent a moment; and then, "There must be a thousand
different ways of being dreary," she said; "and sometimes I think
we make use of them all."

Felix stood up quickly, holding up his hand. "If you could only keep
that look on your face for half an hour--while I catch it!" he said.
"It is uncommonly handsome."

"To look handsome for half an hour--that is a great deal to ask
of me," she answered.

"It would be the portrait of a young woman who has taken some vow,
some pledge, that she repents of," said Felix, "and who is thinking
it over at leisure."

"I have taken no vow, no pledge," said Gertrude, very gravely;
"I have nothing to repent of."

"My dear cousin, that was only a figure of speech.
I am very sure that no one in your excellent family has anything
to repent of."

"And yet we are always repenting!" Gertrude exclaimed.
"That is what I mean by our being dreary. You know it perfectly well;
you only pretend that you don't."

Felix gave a quick laugh. "The half hour is going on,
and yet you are handsomer than ever. One must be careful
what one says, you see."

"To me," said Gertrude, "you can say anything."

Felix looked at her, as an artist might, and painted for some
time in silence.

"Yes, you seem to me different from your father and sister--
from most of the people you have lived with," he observed.

"To say that one's self," Gertrude went on, "is like saying--
by implication, at least--that one is better. I am not better;
I am much worse. But they say themselves that I am different.
It makes them unhappy."

"Since you accuse me of concealing my real impressions,
I may admit that I think the tendency--among you generally--
is to be made unhappy too easily."

"I wish you would tell that to my father," said Gertrude.

"It might make him more unhappy!" Felix exclaimed, laughing.

"It certainly would. I don't believe you have seen people like that."

"Ah, my dear cousin, how do you know what I have seen?" Felix demanded.
"How can I tell you?"

"You might tell me a great many things, if you only would. You have seen
people like yourself--people who are bright and gay and fond of amusement.
We are not fond of amusement."

"Yes," said Felix, "I confess that rather strikes me.
You don't seem to me to get all the pleasure out of life
that you might. You
don't seem to me to enjoy..... Do you mind my saying this?" he
asked, pausing.

"Please go on," said the girl, earnestly.

"You seem to me very well placed for enjoying. You have money
and liberty and what is called in Europe a 'position.'
But you take a painful view of life, as one may say."

"One ought to think it bright and charming and delightful,
eh?" asked Gertrude.

"I should say so--if one can. It is true it all depends
upon that," Felix added.

"You know there is a great deal of misery in the world,"
said his model.

"I have seen a little of it," the young man rejoined.
"But it was all over there--beyond the sea. I don't see any here.
This is a paradise."

Gertrude said nothing; she sat looking at the dahlias and the
currant-bushes in the garden, while Felix went on with his work.
"To 'enjoy,' " she began at last, "to take life--not painfully,
must one do something wrong?"

Felix gave his long, light laugh again. "Seriously, I think not.
And for this reason, among others: you strike me as very capable
of enjoying, if the chance were given you, and yet at the same time
as incapable of wrong-doing."

"I am sure," said Gertrude, "that you are very wrong
in telling a person that she is incapable of that.
We are never nearer to evil than when we believe that."

"You are handsomer than ever," observed Felix, irrelevantly.

Gertrude had got used to hearing him say this.
There was not so much excitement in it as at first.
"What ought one to do?" she continued. "To give parties,
to go to the theatre, to read novels, to keep late hours?"

"I don't think it 's what one does or one does n't
do that promotes enjoyment," her companion answered.
"It is the general way of looking at life."

"They look at it as a discipline--that 's what they do here.
I have often been told that."

"Well, that 's very good. But there is another way," added Felix, smiling:
"to look at it as an opportunity."

"An opportunity--yes," said Gertrude. "One would get more pleasure that way."

"I don't attempt to say anything better for it than that it
has been my own way--and that is not saying much!"
Felix had laid down his palette and brushes; he was leaning back,
with his arms folded, to judge the effect of his work.
"And you know," he said, "I am a very petty personage."

"You have a great deal of talent," said Gertrude.

"No--no," the young man rejoined, in a tone of cheerful impartiality,
"I have not a great deal of talent. It is nothing at all remarkable.
I assure you I should know if it were. I shall always be obscure.
The world will never hear of me." Gertrude looked at him with a
strange feeling. She was thinking of the great world which he knew
and which she did not, and how full of brilliant talents it
must be, since it could afford to make light of his abilities.
"You need n't in general attach much importance to anything I
tell you," he pursued; "but you may believe me when I say this,--
that I am little better than a good-natured feather-head."

"A feather-head?" she repeated.

"I am a species of Bohemian."

"A Bohemian?" Gertrude had never heard this term before, save as
a geographical denomination; and she quite failed to understand
the figurative meaning which her companion appeared to attach to it.
But it gave her pleasure.

Felix had pushed back his chair and risen to his feet;
he slowly came toward her, smiling. "I am a sort of adventurer,"
he said, looking down at her.

She got up, meeting his smile. "An adventurer?" she repeated.
"I should like to hear your adventures."

For an instant she believed that he was going to take her hand;
but he dropped his own hands suddenly into the pockets of his
painting-jacket. "There is no reason why you should n't," he said.
"I have been an adventurer, but my adventures have been very innocent.
They have all been happy ones; I don't think there are any I should n't tell.
They were very pleasant and very pretty; I should like to go over them
in memory. Sit down again, and I will begin," he added in a moment,
with his naturally persuasive smile.

Gertrude sat down again on that day, and she sat down on
several other days. Felix, while he plied his brush, told her
a great many stories, and she listened with charmed avidity.
Her eyes rested upon his lips; she was very serious; sometimes,
from her air of wondering gravity, he thought she was displeased.
But Felix never believed for more than a single moment in any displeasure
of his own producing. This would have been fatuity if the optimism
it expressed had not been much more a hope than a prejudice.
It is beside the matter to say that he had a good conscience;
for the best conscience is a sort of self-reproach, and this young man's
brilliantly healthy nature spent itself in objective good intentions
which were ignorant of any test save exactness in hitting their mark.
He told Gertrude how he had walked over France and Italy with a painter's
knapsack on his back, paying his way often by knocking off a flattering
portrait of his host or hostess. He told her how he had played
the violin in a little band of musicians--not of high celebrity--
who traveled through foreign lands giving provincial concerts.
He told her also how he had been a momentary ornament of a troupe
of strolling actors, engaged in the arduous task of interpreting
Shakespeare to French and German, Polish and Hungarian audiences.

While this periodical recital was going on, Gertrude lived
in a fantastic world; she seemed to herself to be reading
a romance that came out in daily numbers. She had known nothing
so delightful since the perusal of "Nicholas Nickleby."
One afternoon she went to see her cousin, Mrs. Acton,
Robert's mother, who was a great invalid, never leaving the house.
She came back alone, on foot, across the fields--this being
a short way which they often used. Felix had gone to Boston
with her father, who desired to take the young man to call upon
some of his friends, old gentlemen who remembered his mother--
remembered her, but said nothing about her--and several
of whom, with the gentle ladies their wives, had driven out
from town to pay their respects at the little house among
the apple-trees, in vehicles which reminded the Baroness,
who received her visitors with discriminating civility,
of the large, light, rattling barouche in which she herself had
made her journey to this neighborhood. The afternoon was waning;
in the western sky the great picture of a New England sunset,
painted in crimson and silver, was suspended from the zenith;
and the stony pastures, as Gertrude traversed them, thinking
intently to herself, were covered with a light, clear glow.
At the open gate of one of the fields she saw from the distance
a man's figure; he stood there as if he were waiting
for her, and as she came nearer she recognized Mr. Brand.
She had a feeling as of not having seen him for some time;
she could not have said for how long, for it yet seemed to her
that he had been very lately at the house.

"May I walk back with you?" he asked. And when she had said
that he might if he wanted, he observed that he had seen her
and recognized her half a mile away.

"You must have very good eyes," said Gertrude.

"Yes, I have very good eyes, Miss Gertrude," said Mr. Brand.
She perceived that he meant something; but for a long time past
Mr. Brand had constantly meant something, and she had almost
got used to it. She felt, however, that what he meant had now
a renewed power to disturb her, to perplex and agitate her.
He walked beside her in silence for a moment, and then he added,
"I have had no trouble in seeing that you are beginning to avoid me.
But perhaps," he went on, "one need n't have had very good eyes
to see that."

"I have not avoided you," said Gertrude, without looking at him.

"I think you have been unconscious that you were avoiding me,"
Mr. Brand replied. "You have not even known that I was there."

"Well, you are here now, Mr. Brand!" said Gertrude, with a little laugh.
"I know that very well."

He made no rejoinder. He simply walked beside her slowly,
as they were obliged to walk over the soft grass.
Presently they came to another gate, which was closed.
Mr. Brand laid his hand upon it, but he made no movement
to open it; he stood and looked at his companion.
"You are very much interested--very much absorbed," he said.

Gertrude glanced at him; she saw that he was pale and that
he looked excited. She had never seen Mr. Brand excited before,
and she felt that the spectacle, if fully carried out,
would be impressive, almost painful. "Absorbed in what?"
she asked. Then she looked away at the illuminated sky.
She felt guilty and uncomfortable, and yet she was vexed
with herself for feeling so. But Mr. Brand, as he stood
there looking at her with his small, kind, persistent eyes,
represented an immense body of half-obliterated obligations,
that were rising again into a certain distinctness.

"You have new interests, new occupations," he went on.
"I don't know that I can say that you have new duties.
We have always old ones, Gertrude," he added.

"Please open the gate, Mr. Brand," she said; and she felt as if,
in saying so, she were cowardly and petulant. But he opened the gate,
and allowed her to pass; then he closed it behind himself.
Before she had time to turn away he put out his hand and held her
an instant by the wrist.

"I want to say something to you," he said.

"I know what you want to say," she answered. And she was on
the point of adding, "And I know just how you will say it;"
but these words she kept back.

"I love you, Gertrude," he said. "I love you very much;
I love you more than ever."

He said the words just as she had known he would;
she had heard them before. They had no charm for her;
she had said to herself before that it was very strange.
It was supposed to be delightful for a woman to listen
to such words; but these seemed to her flat and mechanical.
"I wish you would forget that," she declared.

"How can I--why should I?" he asked.

"I have made you no promise--given you no pledge," she said,
looking at him, with her voice trembling a little.

"You have let me feel that I have an influence over you.
You have opened your mind to me."

"I never opened my mind to you, Mr. Brand!" Gertrude cried,
with some vehemence.

"Then you were not so frank as I thought--as we all thought."

"I don't see what any one else had to do with it!" cried the girl.

"I mean your father and your sister. You know it makes them
happy to think you will listen to me."

She gave a little laugh. "It does n't make them happy," she said.
"Nothing makes them happy. No one is happy here."

"I think your cousin is very happy--Mr. Young," rejoined Mr. Brand,
in a soft, almost timid tone.

"So much the better for him!" And Gertrude gave her little laugh again.

The young man looked at her a moment. "You are very much changed," he said.

"I am glad to hear it," Gertrude declared.

"I am not. I have known you a long time, and I have loved
you as you were."

"I am much obliged to you," said Gertrude. "I must be going home. "

He on his side, gave a little laugh.

"You certainly do avoid me--you see!"

"Avoid me, then," said the girl.

He looked at her again; and then, very gently, "No I will not avoid you,"
he replied; "but I will leave you, for the present, to yourself. I think
you will remember--after a while--some of the things you have forgotten.
I think you will come back to me; I have great faith in that."

This time his voice was very touching; there was a strong,
reproachful force in what he said, and Gertrude could
answer nothing. He turned away and stood there, leaning his
elbows on the gate and looking at the beautiful sunset.
Gertrude left him and took her way home again; but when she reached
the middle of the next field she suddenly burst into tears.
Her tears seemed to her to have been a long time gathering,
and for some moments it was a kind of glee to shed them.
But they presently passed away. There was something a little
hard about Gertrude; and she never wept again.

CHAPTER VI

Going of an afternoon to call upon his niece, Mr. Wentworth more
than once found Robert Acton sitting in her little drawing-room.
This was in no degree, to Mr. Wentworth, a perturbing fact,
for he had no sense of competing with his young kinsman for
Eugenia's good graces. Madame Munster's uncle had the highest
opinion of Robert Acton, who, indeed, in the family at large,
was the object of a great deal of undemonstrative appreciation.
They were all proud of him, in so far as the charge of being
proud may be brought against people who were, habitually,
distinctly guiltless of the misdemeanor known as "taking credit."
They never boasted of Robert Acton, nor indulged in vainglorious
reference to him; they never quoted the clever things
he had said, nor mentioned the generous things he had done.
But a sort of frigidly-tender faith in his unlimited goodness
was a part of their personal sense of right; and there can,
perhaps, be no better proof of the high esteem in which he was
held than the fact that no explicit judgment was ever passed
upon his actions. He was no more praised than he was blamed;
but he was tacitly felt to be an ornament to his circle.
He was the man of the world of the family. He had been to China
and brought home a collection of curiosities; he had made a fortune--
or rather he had quintupled a fortune already considerable;
he was distinguished by that combination of celibacy,
"property," and good humor which appeals to even the most
subdued imaginations; and it was taken for granted that he would
presently place these advantages at the disposal of some
well-regulated young woman of his own "set." Mr. Wentworth was
not a man to admit to himself that--his paternal duties apart--
he liked any individual much better than all other individuals;
but he thought Robert Acton extremely judicious; and this was
perhaps as near an approach as he was capable of to the eagerness
of preference, which his temperament repudiated as it would
have disengaged itself from something slightly unchaste.
Acton was, in fact, very judicious--and something more beside;
and indeed it must be claimed for Mr. Wentworth that in the more
illicit parts of his preference there hovered the vague
adumbration of a belief that his cousin's final merit was
a certain enviable capacity for whistling, rather gallantly,
at the sanctions of mere judgment--for showing a larger courage,
a finer quality of pluck, than common occasion demanded.
Mr. Wentworth would never have risked the intimation that Acton
was made, in the smallest degree, of the stuff of a hero;
but this is small blame to him, for Robert would certainly
never have risked it himself. Acton certainly exercised great
discretion in all things--beginning with his estimate of himself.
He knew that he was by no means so much of a man of the world
as he was supposed to be in local circles; but it must be added
that he knew also that his natural shrewdness had a reach
of which he had never quite given local circles the measure.
He was addicted to taking the humorous view of things,
and he had discovered that even in the narrowest circles
such a disposition may find frequent opportunities.
Such opportunities had formed for some time--that is, since his
return from China, a year and a half before--the most active
element in this gentleman's life, which had just now a rather
indolent air. He was perfectly willing to get married.
He was very fond of books, and he had a handsome library;
that is, his books were much more numerous than Mr. Wentworth's.
He was also very fond of pictures; but it must be confessed,
in the fierce light of contemporary criticism, that his walls
were adorned with several rather abortive masterpieces. He had got
his learning--and there was more of it than commonly appeared--
at Harvard College; and he took a pleasure in old associations,
which made it a part of his daily contentment to live so near
this institution that he often passed it in driving to Boston.
He was extremely interested in the Baroness Munster.

She was very frank with him; or at least she intended to be.
"I am sure you find it very strange that I should have settled
down in this out-of-the-way part of the world!" she said
to him three or four weeks after she had installed herself.
"I am certain you are wondering about my motives. They are
very pure." The Baroness by this time was an old inhabitant;
the best society in Boston had called upon her, and Clifford
Wentworth had taken her several times to drive in his buggy.

Robert Acton was seated near her, playing with a fan; there were always
several fans lying about her drawing-room, with long ribbons of different
colors attached to them, and Acton was always playing with one.
"No, I don't find it at all strange," he said slowly, smiling.
"That a clever woman should turn up in Boston, or its suburbs--that does
not require so much explanation. Boston is a very nice place."

"If you wish to make me contradict you," said the Baroness,
"vous vous y prenez mal. In certain moods there is nothing
I am not capable of agreeing to. Boston is a paradise,
and we are in the suburbs of Paradise."

"Just now I am not at all in the suburbs; I am in the place itself,"
rejoined Acton, who was lounging a little in his chair.
He was, however, not always lounging; and when he was he was
not quite so relaxed as he pretended. To a certain extent,
he sought refuge from shyness in this appearance of relaxation;
and like many persons in the same circumstances he somewhat
exaggerated the appearance. Beyond this, the air of being
much at his ease was a cover for vigilant observation.
He was more than interested in this clever woman, who, whatever he
might say, was clever not at all after the Boston fashion;
she plunged him into a kind of excitement, held him in
vague suspense. He was obliged to admit to himself that he had
never yet seen a woman just like this--not even in China.
He was ashamed, for inscrutable reasons, of the vivacity of
his emotion, and he carried it off, superficially, by taking,
still superficially, the humorous view of Madame Munster.
It was not at all true that he thought it very natural
of her to have made this pious pilgrimage. It might have
been said of him in advance that he was too good a Bostonian
to regard in the light of an eccentricity the desire of even
the remotest alien to visit the New England metropolis.
This was an impulse for which, surely, no apology was needed;
and Madame Munster was the fortunate possessor of several New
England cousins. In fact, however, Madame Munster struck
him as out of keeping with her little circle; she was at
the best a very agreeable, a gracefully mystifying anomaly.
He knew very well that it would not do to address these reflections
too crudely to Mr. Wentworth; he would never have remarked to
the old gentleman that he wondered what the Baroness was up to.
And indeed he had no great desire to share his vague mistrust
with any one. There was a personal pleasure in it; the greatest
pleasure he had known at least since he had come from China.
He would keep the Baroness, for better or worse, to himself;
he had a feeling that he deserved to enjoy a monopoly of her,
for he was certainly the person who had most adequately gauged
her capacity for social intercourse. Before long it became
apparent to him that the Baroness was disposed to lay no tax
upon such a monopoly.

One day (he was sitting there again and playing with a fan)
she asked him to apologize, should the occasion present itself,
to certain people in Boston for her not having returned their calls.
"There are half a dozen places," she said; "a formidable list.
Charlotte Wentworth has written it out for me, in a terrifically
distinct hand. There is no ambiguity on the subject;
I know perfectly where I must go. Mr. Wentworth informs me that
the carriage is always at my disposal, and Charlotte offers to go
with me, in a pair of tight gloves and a very stiff petticoat.
And yet for three days I have been putting it off.
They must think me horribly vicious."

"You ask me to apologize," said Acton, "but you don't tell me
what excuse I can offer."

"That is more," the Baroness declared, "than I am held to. It would
be like my asking you to buy me a bouquet and giving you the money.
I have no reason except that--somehow--it 's too violent an effort.
It is not inspiring. Would n't that serve as an excuse, in Boston?
I am told they are very sincere; they don't tell fibs.
And then Felix ought to go with me, and he is never in readiness.
I don't see him. He is always roaming about the fields and sketching
old barns, or taking ten-mile walks, or painting some one's portrait,
or rowing on the pond, or flirting with Gertrude Wentworth."

"I should think it would amuse you to go and see a few people,"
said Acton. "You are having a very quiet time of it here.
It 's a dull life for you."

"Ah, the quiet,--the quiet!" the Baroness exclaimed. "That 's what I like.
It 's rest. That 's what I came here for. Amusement? I have had amusement.
And as for seeing people--I have already seen a great many in my life.
If it did n't sound ungracious I should say that I wish very humbly your
people here would leave me alone!"

Acton looked at her a moment, and she looked at him.
She was a woman who took being looked at remarkably well.
"So you have come here for rest?" he asked.

"So I may say. I came for many of those reasons that are
no reasons--don't you know?--and yet that are really the best:
to come away, to change, to break with everything.
When once one comes away one must arrive somewhere, and I
asked myself why I should n't arrive here."

"You certainly had time on the way!" said Acton, laughing.

Madame Munster looked at him again; and then, smiling:
"And I have certainly had time, since I got here, to ask myself
why I came. However, I never ask myself idle questions.
Here I am, and it seems to me you ought only to thank me."

"When you go away you will see the difficulties I shall put in your path."

"You mean to put difficulties in my path?" she asked,
rearranging the rosebud in her corsage.

"The greatest of all--that of having been so agreeable"--

"That I shall be unable to depart? Don't be too sure.
I have left some very agreeable people over there."

"Ah," said Acton, "but it was to come here, where I am!"

"I did n't know of your existence. Excuse me for saying anything
so rude; but, honestly speaking, I did not. No," the Baroness pursued,
"it was precisely not to see you--such people as you--that I came."

"Such people as me?" cried Acton.

"I had a sort of longing to come into those natural relations which I knew I
should find here. Over there I had only, as I may say, artificial relations.
Don't you see the difference?"

"The difference tells against me," said Acton. "I suppose I
am an artificial relation."

"Conventional," declared the Baroness; "very conventional."

"Well, there is one way in which the relation of a lady and a gentleman
may always become natural," said Acton.

"You mean by their becoming lovers? That may be natural or not.
And at any rate," rejoined Eugenia, "nous n'en sommes pas la!"

They were not, as yet; but a little later, when she began to go
with him to drive, it might almost have seemed that they were.
He came for her several times, alone, in his high "wagon," drawn
by a pair of charming light-limbed horses. It was different,
her having gone with Clifford Wentworth, who was her cousin,
and so much younger. It was not to be imagined that she should
have a flirtation with Clifford, who was a mere shame-faced boy,
and whom a large section of Boston society supposed to be "engaged"
to Lizzie Acton. Not, indeed, that it was to be conceived that
the Baroness was a possible party to any flirtation whatever;
for she was undoubtedly a married lady. It was generally known
that her matrimonial condition was of the "morganatic" order;
but in its natural aversion to suppose that this meant anything
less than absolute wedlock, the conscience of the community took
refuge in the belief that it implied something even more.

Acton wished her to think highly of American scenery, and he drove
her to great distances, picking out the prettiest roads and
the largest points of view. If we are good when we are contented,
Eugenia's virtues should now certainly have been uppermost;
for she found a charm in the rapid movement through a wild country,
and in a companion who from time to time made the vehicle dip,
with a motion like a swallow's flight, over roads of primitive
construction, and who, as she felt, would do a great many things
that she might ask him. Sometimes, for a couple of hours together,
there were almost no houses; there were nothing but woods and rivers
and lakes and horizons adorned with bright-looking mountains.
It seemed to the Baroness very wild, as I have said, and lovely;
but the impression added something to that sense of the enlargement
of opportunity which had been born of her arrival in the New World.

One day--it was late in the afternoon--Acton pulled up his horses
on the crest of a hill which commanded a beautiful prospect.
He let them stand a long time to rest, while he sat there
and talked with Madame M; auunster. The prospect was
beautiful in spite of there being nothing human within sight.
There was a wilderness of woods, and the gleam of a distant river,
and a glimpse of half the hill-tops in Massachusetts.
The road had a wide, grassy margin, on the further side of which
there flowed a deep, clear brook; there were wild flowers in
the grass, and beside the brook lay the trunk of a fallen tree.
Acton waited a while; at last a rustic wayfarer came trudging
along the road. Acton asked him to hold the horses--
a service he consented to render, as a friendly turn to a
fellow-citizen. Then he invited the Baroness to descend,
and the two wandered away, across the grass, and sat down on
the log beside the brook.

"I imagine it does n't remind you of Silberstadt," said Acton.
It was the first time that he had mentioned Silberstadt to her,
for particular reasons. He knew she had a husband there,
and this was disagreeable to him; and, furthermore, it had been
repeated to him that this husband wished to put her away--a state
of affairs to which even indirect reference was to be deprecated.
It was true, nevertheless, that the Baroness herself had often
alluded to Silberstadt; and Acton had often wondered why her husband
wished to get rid of her. It was a curious position for a lady--
this being known as a repudiated wife; and it is worthy of observation
that the Baroness carried it off with exceeding grace and dignity.
She had made it felt, from the first, that there were two sides
to the question, and that her own side, when she should choose
to present it, would be replete with touching interest.

"It does not remind me of the town, of course," she said,
"of the sculptured gables and the Gothic churches, of the
wonderful Schloss, with its moat and its clustering towers.
But it has a little look of some other parts of the principality.
One might fancy one's self among those grand old German forests,
those legendary mountains; the sort of country one sees from
the windows at Shreckenstein."

"What is Shreckenstein?" asked Acton.

"It is a great castle,--the summer residence of the Reigning Prince."

"Have you ever lived there?"

"I have stayed there," said the Baroness. Acton was silent;
he looked a while at the uncastled landscape before him.
"It is the first time you have ever asked me about Silberstadt,"
she said. "I should think you would want to know about my marriage;
it must seem to you very strange."

Acton looked at her a moment. "Now you would n't like me to say that!"

"You Americans have such odd ways!" the Baroness declared.
"You never ask anything outright; there seem to be so many
things you can't talk about."

"We Americans are very polite," said Acton, whose national
consciousness had been complicated by a residence in
foreign lands, and who yet disliked to hear Americans abused.
"We don't like to tread upon people's toes," he said.
"But I should like very much to hear about your marriage.
Now tell me how it came about."

"The Prince fell in love with me," replied the Baroness simply.
"He pressed his suit very hard. At first he did n't wish me to marry him;
on the contrary. But on that basis I refused to listen to him.
So he offered me marriage--in so far as he might. I was young,
and I confess I was rather flattered. But if it were to be done
again now, I certainly should not accept him."

"How long ago was this?" asked Acton.

"Oh--several years," said Eugenia. "You should never ask
a woman for dates."

"Why, I should think that when a woman was relating history"....
Acton answered. "And now he wants to break it off?"

"They want him to make a political marriage. It is his brother's idea.
His brother is very clever."

"They must be a precious pair!" cried Robert Acton.

The Baroness gave a little philosophic shrug. "Que voulez-vous?
They are princes. They think they are treating me very well.
Silberstadt is a perfectly despotic little state, and the Reigning
Prince may annul the marriage by a stroke of his pen.
But he has promised me, nevertheless, not to do so without
my formal consent."

"And this you have refused?"

"Hitherto. It is an indignity, and I have wished at least to make it
difficult for them. But I have a little document in my writing-desk
which I have only to sign and send back to the Prince."

"Then it will be all over?"

The Baroness lifted her hand, and dropped it again.
"Of course I shall keep my title; at least, I shall be at
liberty to keep it if I choose. And I suppose I shall keep it.
One must have a name. And I shall keep my pension.
It is very small--it is wretchedly small; but it is what
I live on."

"And you have only to sign that paper?" Acton asked.

The Baroness looked at him a moment. "Do you urge it?"

He got up slowly, and stood with his hands in his pockets.
"What do you gain by not doing it?"

"I am supposed to gain this advantage--that if I delay, or temporize,
the Prince may come back to me, may make a stand against his brother.
He is very fond of me, and his brother has pushed him only little by little."

"If he were to come back to you," said Acton, "would you--
would you take him back?"

The Baroness met his eyes; she colored just a little. Then she rose.
"I should have the satisfaction of saying, 'Now it is my turn.
I break with your serene highness!' "

They began to walk toward the carriage. "Well," said Robert Acton,
"it 's a curious story! How did you make his acquaintance?"

"I was staying with an old lady--an old Countess--in Dresden.
She had been a friend of my father's. My father was dead;
I was very much alone. My brother was wandering about the world
in a theatrical troupe."

"Your brother ought to have stayed with you," Acton observed,
"and kept you from putting your trust in princes."

The Baroness was silent a moment, and then, "He did what he could,"
she said. "He sent me money. The old Countess encouraged
the Prince; she was even pressing. It seems to me,"
Madame Munster added, gently, "that--under the circumstances--
I behaved very well."

Acton glanced at her, and made the observation--he had made it before--
that a woman looks the prettier for having unfolded her wrongs or
her sufferings. "Well," he reflected, audibly, "I should like to see
you send his serene highness--somewhere!"

Madame Munster stooped and plucked a daisy from the grass.
"And not sign my renunciation?"

"Well, I don't know--I don't know," said Acton.

"In one case I should have my revenge; in another case I
should have my liberty."

Acton gave a little laugh as he helped her into the carriage.
"At any rate," he said, "take good care of that paper."

A couple of days afterward he asked her to come and see his house.
The visit had already been proposed, but it had been put off in
consequence of his mother's illness. She was a constant invalid,
and she had passed these recent years, very patiently, in a great
flowered arm-chair at her bedroom window. Lately, for some days,
she had been unable to see any one; but now she was better,
and she sent the Baroness a very civil message. Acton had wished
their visitor to come to dinner; but Madame M; auunster preferred
to begin with a simple call. She had reflected that if she should
go to dinner Mr. Wentworth and his daughters would also be asked,
and it had seemed to her that the peculiar character of the occasion
would be best preserved in a tete-a-tete with her host.
Why the occasion should have a peculiar character she explained to no one.
As far as any one could see, it was simply very pleasant.
Acton came for her and drove her to his door, an operation which was
rapidly performed. His house the Baroness mentally pronounced a very
good one; more articulately, she declared that it was enchanting.
It was large and square and painted brown; it stood in a well-kept
shrubbery, and was approached, from the gate, by a short drive.
It was, moreover, a much more modern dwelling than Mr. Wentworth's,
and was more redundantly upholstered and expensively ornamented.
The Baroness perceived that her entertainer had analyzed material
comfort to a sufficiently fine point. And then he possessed the most
delightful chinoiseries--trophies of his sojourn in the Celestial Empire:
pagodas of ebony and cabinets of ivory; sculptured monsters,
grinning and leering on chimney-pieces, in front of beautifully
figured hand-screens; porcelain dinner-sets, gleaming behind
the glass doors of mahogany buffets; large screens, in corners,
covered with tense silk and embroidered with mandarins and dragons.
These things were scattered all over the house, and they
gave Eugenia a pretext for a complete domiciliary visit.
She liked it, she enjoyed it; she thought it a very nice place.
It had a mixture of the homely and the liberal, and though it
was almost a museum, the large, little-used rooms were as fresh
and clean as a well-kept dairy. Lizzie Acton told her that she dusted
all the pagodas and other curiosities every day with her own hands;
and the Baroness answered that she was evidently a household fairy.
Lizzie had not at all the look of a young lady who dusted things;
she wore such pretty dresses and had such delicate fingers
that it was difficult to imagine her immersed in sordid cares.
She came to meet Madame M; auunster on her arrival, but she
said nothing, or almost nothing, and the Baroness again reflected--
she had had occasion to do so before--that American girls had no manners.
She disliked this little American girl, and she was quite prepared
to learn that she had failed to commend herself to Miss Acton.
Lizzie struck her as positive and explicit almost to pertness;
and the idea of her combining the apparent incongruities of a taste
for housework and the wearing of fresh, Parisian-looking dresses
suggested the possession of a dangerous energy. It was a source
of irritation to the Baroness that in this country it should seem
to matter whether a little girl were a trifle less or a trifle
more of a nonentity; for Eugenia had hitherto been conscious of no
moral pressure as regards the appreciation of diminutive virgins.
It was perhaps an indication of Lizzie's pertness that she
very soon retired and left the Baroness on her brother's hands.
Acton talked a great deal about his chinoiseries; he knew a good
deal about porcelain and bric-a-brac. The Baroness, in her progress
through the house, made, as it were, a great many stations.
She sat down everywhere, confessed to being a little tired, and asked about
the various objects with a curious mixture of alertness and inattention.
If there had been any one to say it to she would have declared that
she was positively in love with her host; but she could hardly make
this declaration--even in the strictest confidence--to Acton himself.
It gave her, nevertheless, a pleasure that had some of the charm of
unwontedness to feel, with that admirable keenness with which she was
capable of feeling things, that he had a disposition without any edges;
that even his humorous irony always expanded toward the point.
One's impression of his honesty was almost like carrying a bunch
of flowers; the perfume was most agreeable, but they were occasionally
an inconvenience. One could trust him, at any rate, round all
the corners of the world; and, withal, he was not absolutely simple,
which would have been excess; he was only relatively simple,
which was quite enough for the Baroness.

Lizzie reappeared to say that her mother would now be happy to receive
Madame Munster; and the Baroness followed her to Mrs. Acton's apartment.
Eugenia reflected, as she went, that it was not the affectation
of impertinence that made her dislike this young lady, for on
that ground she could easily have beaten her. It was not an
aspiration on the girl's part to rivalry, but a kind of laughing,
childishly-mocking indifference to the results of comparison.
Mrs. Acton was an emaciated, sweet-faced woman of five and fifty,
sitting with pillows behind her, and looking out on a clump
of hemlocks. She was very modest, very timid, and very ill;
she made Eugenia feel grateful that she herself was not like that--
neither so ill, nor, possibly, so modest. On a chair, beside her,
lay a volume of Emerson's Essays. It was a great occasion for poor
Mrs. Acton, in her helpless condition, to be confronted with a clever
foreign lady, who had more manner than any lady--any dozen ladies--
that she had ever seen.

"I have heard a great deal about you," she said, softly, to the Baroness.

"From your son, eh?" Eugenia asked. "He has talked to me immensely
of you. Oh, he talks of you as you would like," the Baroness declared;
"as such a son must talk of such a mother!"

Mrs. Acton sat gazing; this was part of Madame Munster's "manner."
But Robert Acton was gazing too, in vivid consciousness that
he had barely mentioned his mother to their brilliant guest.
He never talked of this still maternal presence,--a presence
refined to such delicacy that it had almost resolved itself,
with him, simply into the subjective emotion of gratitude.
And Acton rarely talked of his emotions. The Baroness turned
her smile toward him, and she instantly felt that she had
been observed to be fibbing. She had struck a false note.
But who were these people to whom such fibbing was not pleasing?
If they were annoyed, the Baroness was equally so; and after the
exchange of a few civil inquiries and low-voiced responses she took
leave of Mrs. Acton. She begged Robert not to come home with her;
she would get into the carriage alone; she preferred that.
This was imperious, and she thought he looked disappointed.
While she stood before the door with him--the carriage was
turning in the gravel-walk--this thought restored her serenity.

When she had given him her hand in farewell she looked at him a moment.
"I have almost decided to dispatch that paper," she said.

He knew that she alluded to the document that she had called her renunciation;
and he assisted her into the carriage without saying anything.
But just before the vehicle began to move he said, "Well, when you
have in fact dispatched it, I hope you will let me know!"

CHAPTER VII

Felix young finished Gertrude's portrait, and he afterwards transferred
to canvas the features of many members of that circle of which it
may be said that he had become for the time the pivot and the centre.
I am afraid it must be confessed that he was a decidedly
flattering painter, and that he imparted to his models a romantic
grace which seemed easily and cheaply acquired by the payment of a
hundred dollars to a young man who made "sitting" so entertaining.
For Felix was paid for his pictures, making, as he did, no secret
of the fact that in guiding his steps to the Western world affectionate
curiosity had gone hand in hand with a desire to better his condition.
He took his uncle's portrait quite as if Mr. Wentworth had never
averted himself from the experiment; and as he compassed his end
only by the exercise of gentle violence, it is but fair to add
that he allowed the old man to give him nothing but his time.
He passed his arm into Mr. Wentworth's one summer morning--
very few arms indeed had ever passed into Mr. Wentworth's--and led
him across the garden and along the road into the studio which he had
extemporized in the little house among the apple-trees. The grave
gentleman felt himself more and more fascinated by his clever nephew,
whose fresh, demonstrative youth seemed a compendium of experiences
so strangely numerous. It appeared to him that Felix must know
a great deal; he would like to learn what he thought about some
of those things as regards which his own conversation had always
been formal, but his knowledge vague. Felix had a confident,
gayly trenchant way of judging human actions which Mr. Wentworth
grew little by little to envy; it seemed like criticism made easy.
Forming an opinion--say on a person's conduct--was, with Mr. Wentworth,
a good deal like fumbling in a lock with a key chosen at hazard.
He seemed to himself to go about the world with a big bunch
of these ineffectual instruments at his girdle. His nephew,
on the other hand, with a single turn of the wrist, opened any
door as adroitly as a horse-thief. He felt obliged to keep up
the convention that an uncle is always wiser than a nephew,
even if he could keep it up no otherwise than by listening
in serious silence to Felix's quick, light, constant discourse.
But there came a day when he lapsed from consistency and almost
asked his nephew's advice.

"Have you ever entertained the idea of settling in the United States?"
he asked one morning, while Felix brilliantly plied his brush.

"My dear uncle," said Felix, "excuse me if your question makes me
smile a little. To begin with, I have never entertained an idea.
Ideas often entertain me; but I am afraid I have never seriously
made a plan. I know what you are going to say; or rather,
I know what you think, for I don't think you will say it--
that this is very frivolous and loose-minded on my part.
So it is; but I am made like that; I take things as they come,
and somehow there is always some new thing to follow the last.
In the second place, I should never propose to settle.
I can't settle, my dear uncle; I 'm not a settler.
I know that is what strangers are supposed to do here;
they always settle. But I have n't--to answer your question--
entertained that idea."

"You intend to return to Europe and resume your irregular manner of life?"
Mr. Wentworth inquired.

"I can't say I intend. But it 's very likely I shall go back to Europe.
After all, I am a European. I feel that, you know. It will depend a good
deal upon my sister. She 's even more of a European than I; here, you know,
she 's a picture out of her setting. And as for 'resuming,' dear uncle,
I really have never given up my irregular manner of life. What, for me,
could be more irregular than this?"

"Than what?" asked Mr. Wentworth, with his pale gravity.

"Well, than everything! Living in the midst of you, this way; this charming,
quiet, serious family life; fraternizing with Charlotte and Gertrude;
calling upon twenty young ladies and going out to walk with them;
sitting with you in the evening on the piazza and listening to the crickets,
and going to bed at ten o'clock."

"Your description is very animated," said Mr. Wentworth;
"but I see nothing improper in what you describe."

"Neither do I, dear uncle. It is extremely delightful;
I should n't like it if it were improper. I assure you I
don't like improper things; though I dare say you think I do,"
Felix went on, painting away.

"I have never accused you of that."

"Pray don't," said Felix, "because, you see, at bottom I am
a terrible Philistine."

"A Philistine?" repeated Mr. Wentworth.

"I mean, as one may say, a plain, God-fearing man."
Mr. Wentworth looked at him reservedly, like a mystified sage,
and Felix continued, "I trust I shall enjoy a venerable and
venerated old age. I mean to live long. I can hardly call
that a plan, perhaps; but it 's a keen desire--a rosy vision.
I shall be a lively, perhaps even a frivolous old man!"

"It is natural," said his uncle, sententiously, "that one
should desire to prolong an agreeable life. We have perhaps
a selfish indisposition to bring our pleasure to a close.
But I presume," he added, "that you expect to marry."

"That too, dear uncle, is a hope, a desire, a vision," said Felix.
It occurred to him for an instant that this was possibly a preface
to the offer of the hand of one of Mr. Wentworth's admirable daughters.
But in the name of decent modesty and a proper sense of
the hard realities of this world, Felix banished the thought.
His uncle was the incarnation of benevolence, certainly; but from
that to accepting--much more postulating--the idea of a union between
a young lady with a dowry presumptively brilliant and a penniless
artist with no prospect of fame, there was a very long way.
Felix had lately become conscious of a luxurious preference for
the society--if possible unshared with others--of Gertrude Wentworth;
but he had relegated this young lady, for the moment, to the coldly
brilliant category of unattainable possessions. She was not the first
woman for whom he had entertained an unpractical admiration.
He had been in love with duchesses and countesses, and he had made,
once or twice, a perilously near approach to cynicism in declaring
that the disinterestedness of women had been overrated.
On the whole, he had tempered audacity with modesty; and it
is but fair to him now to say explicitly that he would have been
incapable of taking advantage of his present large allowance of
familiarity to make love to the younger of his handsome cousins.
Felix had grown up among traditions in the light of which such
a proceeding looked like a grievous breach of hospitality.
I have said that he was always happy, and it may be counted among
the present sources of his happiness that he had as regards this
matter of his relations with Gertrude a deliciously good conscience.
His own deportment seemed to him suffused with the beauty of virtue--
a form of beauty that he admired with the same vivacity with which
he admired all other forms.

"I think that if you marry," said Mr. Wentworth presently,
"it will conduce to your happiness."

"Sicurissimo!" Felix exclaimed; and then, arresting his brush, he looked at
his uncle with a smile. "There is something I feel tempted to say to you.
May I risk it?"

Mr. Wentworth drew himself up a little. "I am very safe;
I don't repeat things." But he hoped Felix would not
risk too much.

Felix was laughing at his answer.

"It 's odd to hear you telling me how to be happy. I don't think
you know yourself, dear uncle. Now, does that sound brutal?"

The old man was silent a moment, and then, with a dry dignity
that suddenly touched his nephew: "We may sometimes point
out a road we are unable to follow."

"Ah, don't tell me you have had any sorrows," Felix rejoined.
"I did n't suppose it, and I did n't mean to allude to them.
I simply meant that you all don't amuse yourselves."

"Amuse ourselves? We are not children."

"Precisely not! You have reached the proper age.
I was saying that the other day to Gertrude," Felix added.
"I hope it was not indiscreet."

"If it was," said Mr. Wentworth, with a keener irony than Felix would
have thought him capable of, "it was but your way of amusing yourself.
I am afraid you have never had a trouble."

"Oh, yes, I have!" Felix declared, with some spirit; "before I knew better.
But you don't catch me at it again."

Mr. Wentworth maintained for a while a silence more expressive
than a deep-drawn sigh. "You have no children," he said at last.

"Don't tell me," Felix exclaimed, "that your charming young people
are a source of grief to you!"

"I don't speak of Charlotte." And then, after a pause,
Mr. Wentworth continued, "I don't speak of Gertrude.
But I feel considerable anxiety about Clifford.
I will tell you another time."

The next time he gave Felix a sitting his nephew reminded him that he had
taken him into his confidence. "How is Clifford to-day?" Felix asked.
"He has always seemed to me a young man of remarkable discretion.
Indeed, he is only too discreet; he seems on his guard against me--
as if he thought me rather light company. The other day he told his sister--
Gertrude repeated it to me--that I was always laughing at him. If I laugh
it is simply from the impulse to try and inspire him with confidence.
That is the only way I have."

"Clifford's situation is no laughing matter," said Mr. Wentworth.
"It is very peculiar, as I suppose you have guessed."

"Ah, you mean his love affair with his cousin?"

Mr. Wentworth stared, blushing a little. "I mean his absence from college.
He has been suspended. We have decided not to speak of it unless
we are asked."

"Suspended?" Felix repeated.

"He has been requested by the Harvard authorities to absent
himself for six months. Meanwhile he is studying with Mr. Brand.
We think Mr. Brand will help him; at least we hope so."

"What befell him at college?" Felix asked. "He was too fond of pleasure?
Mr. Brand certainly will not teach him any of those secrets!"

"He was too fond of something of which he should not have been fond.
I suppose it is considered a pleasure."

Felix gave his light laugh. "My dear uncle, is there any doubt about
its being a pleasure? C'est de son age, as they say in France."

"I should have said rather it was a vice of later life--
of disappointed old age."

Felix glanced at his uncle, with his lifted eyebrows, and then,
"Of what are you speaking?" he demanded, smiling.

"Of the situation in which Clifford was found."

"Ah, he was found--he was caught?"

"Necessarily, he was caught. He could n't walk; he staggered."

"Oh," said Felix, "he drinks! I rather suspected that,
from something I observed the first day I came here.
I quite agree with you that it is a low taste. It 's not a vice
for a gentleman. He ought to give it up."

"We hope for a good deal from Mr. Brand's influence,"
Mr. Wentworth went on. "He has talked to him from the first.
And he never touches anything himself."

"I will talk to him--I will talk to him!" Felix declared, gayly.

"What will you say to him?" asked his uncle, with some apprehension.

Felix for some moments answered nothing. "Do you mean to marry
him to his cousin?" he asked at last.

"Marry him?" echoed Mr. Wentworth. "I should n't think his cousin
would want to marry him."

"You have no understanding, then, with Mrs. Acton?"

Mr. Wentworth stared, almost blankly. "I have never discussed
such subjects with her."

"I should think it might be time," said Felix. "Lizzie Acton
is admirably pretty, and if Clifford is dangerous...."

"They are not engaged," said Mr. Wentworth. "I have no reason
to suppose they are engaged."

"Par exemple!" cried Felix. "A clandestine engagement?
Trust me, Clifford, as I say, is a charming boy.
He is incapable of that. Lizzie Acton, then, would not be
jealous of another woman."

"I certainly hope not," said the old man, with a vague sense
of jealousy being an even lower vice than a love of liquor.

"The best thing for Clifford, then," Felix propounded,
"is to become interested in some clever, charming woman."
And he paused in his painting, and, with his elbows on
his knees, looked with bright communicativeness at his uncle.
"You see, I believe greatly in the influence of women.
Living with women helps to make a man a gentleman.
It is very true Clifford has his sisters, who are so charming.
But there should be a different sentiment in play from
the fraternal, you know. He has Lizzie Acton; but she, perhaps,
is rather immature."

"I suspect Lizzie has talked to him, reasoned with him,"
said Mr. Wentworth.

"On the impropriety of getting tipsy--on the beauty of temperance?
That is dreary work for a pretty young girl. No," Felix continued;
"Clifford ought to frequent some agreeable woman, who,
without ever mentioning such unsavory subjects, would give
him a sense of its being very ridiculous to be fuddled.
If he could fall in love with her a little, so much the better.
The thing would operate as a cure."

"Well, now, what lady should you suggest?" asked Mr. Wentworth.

"There is a clever woman under your hand. My sister."

"Your sister--under my hand?" Mr. Wentworth repeated.

"Say a word to Clifford. Tell him to be bold. He is well
disposed already; he has invited her two or three times to drive.
But I don't think he comes to see her. Give him a hint to come--
to come often. He will sit there of an afternoon, and they will talk.
It will do him good. "

Mr. Wentworth meditated. "You think she will exercise a helpful influence?"

"She will exercise a civilizing--I may call it a sobering--influence.
A charming, clever, witty woman always does--especially if she is a little
of a coquette. My dear uncle, the society of such women has been half
my education. If Clifford is suspended, as you say, from college,
let Eugenia be his preceptress."

Mr. Wentworth continued thoughtful. "You think Eugenia is
a coquette?" he asked.

"What pretty woman is not?" Felix demanded in turn.
But this, for Mr. Wentworth, could at the best have been no answer,
for he did not think his niece pretty. "With Clifford,"
the young man pursued, "Eugenia will simply be enough of a
coquette to be a little ironical. That 's what he needs.
So you recommend him to be nice with her, you know.
The suggestion will come best from you."

"Do I understand," asked the old man, "that I am to suggest to my son
to make a--a profession of--of affection to Madame Munster?"

"Yes, yes--a profession!" cried Felix sympathetically.

"But, as I understand it, Madame Munster is a married woman."

"Ah," said Felix, smiling, "of course she can't marry him.
But she will do what she can."

Mr. Wentworth sat for some time with his eyes on the floor;
at last he got up. "I don't think," he said, "that I can
undertake to recommend my son any such course." And without
meeting Felix's surprised glance he broke off his sitting,
which was not resumed for a fortnight.

Felix was very fond of the little lake which occupied so many
of Mr. Wentworth's numerous acres, and of a remarkable pine
grove which lay upon the further side of it, planted upon
a steep embankment and haunted by the summer breeze.
The murmur of the air in the far off tree-tops had
a strange distinctness; it was almost articulate.
One afternoon the young man came out of his painting-room
and passed the open door of Eugenia's little salon.
Within, in the cool dimness, he saw his sister, dressed in white,
buried in her arm-chair, and holding to her face an immense bouquet.
Opposite to her sat Clifford Wentworth, twirling his hat.
He had evidently just presented the bouquet to the Baroness,
whose fine eyes, as she glanced at him over the big roses
and geraniums, wore a conversational smile. Felix, standing on
the threshold of the cottage, hesitated for a moment as to
whether he should retrace his steps and enter the parlor.
Then he went his way and passed into Mr. Wentworth's garden.
That civilizing process to which he had suggested that Clifford
should be subjected appeared to have come on of itself.
Felix was very sure, at least, that Mr. Wentworth had not
adopted his ingenious device for stimulating the young man's
aesthetic consciousness. "Doubtless he supposes," he said
to himself, after the conversation that has been narrated,
"that I desire, out of fraternal benevolence, to procure
for Eugenia the amusement of a flirtation--or, as he probably
calls it, an intrigue--with the too susceptible Clifford.
It must be admitted--and I have noticed it before--that nothing
exceeds the license occasionally taken by the imagination
of very rigid people." Felix, on his own side, had of course
said nothing to Clifford; but he had observed to Eugenia
that Mr. Wentworth was much mortified at his son's low tastes.
"We ought to do something to help them, after all their
kindness to us," he had added. "Encourage Clifford to come
and see you, and inspire him with a taste for conversation.
That will supplant the other, which only comes from
his puerility, from his not taking his position in the world--
that of a rich young man of ancient stock--seriously enough.
Make him a little more serious. Even if he makes love to you
it is no great matter."

"I am to offer myself as a superior form of intoxication--
a substitute for a brandy bottle, eh?" asked the Baroness.
"Truly, in this country one comes to strange uses."

But she had not positively declined to undertake Clifford's
higher education, and Felix, who had not thought of the matter
again, being haunted with visions of more personal profit,
now reflected that the work of redemption had fairly begun.
The idea in prospect had seemed of the happiest, but in operation
it made him a trifle uneasy. "What if Eugenia--what if Eugenia"--
he asked himself softly; the question dying away in his sense of
Eugenia's undetermined capacity. But before Felix had time either
to accept or to reject its admonition, even in this vague form,
he saw Robert Acton turn out of Mr. Wentworth's inclosure,
by a distant gate, and come toward the cottage in the orchard.
Acton had evidently walked from his own house along a shady
by-way and was intending to pay a visit to Madame Munster.
Felix watched him a moment; then he turned away.
Acton could be left to play the part of Providence and interrupt--
if interruption were needed--Clifford's entanglement with Eugenia.

Felix passed through the garden toward the house and
toward a postern gate which opened upon a path leading
across the fields, beside a little wood, to the lake.
He stopped and looked up at the house; his eyes rested more
particularly upon a certain open window, on the shady side.
Presently Gertrude appeared there, looking out into the summer light.
He took off his hat to her and bade her good-day;
he remarked that he was going to row across the pond,
and begged that she would do him the honor to accompany him.
She looked at him a moment; then, without saying anything,
she turned away. But she soon reappeared below in one of those
quaint and charming Leghorn hats, tied with white satin bows,
that were worn at that period; she also carried a green parasol.
She went with him to the edge of the lake, where a couple of
boats were always moored; they got into one of them, and Felix,
with gentle strokes, propelled it to the opposite shore.
The day was the perfection of summer weather; the little lake was
the color of sunshine; the plash of the oars was the only sound,
and they found themselves listening to it. They disembarked, and,
by a winding path, ascended the pine-crested mound which overlooked
the water, whose white expanse glittered between the trees.
The place was delightfully cool, and had the added charm that--
in the softly sounding pine boughs--you seemed to hear
the coolness as well as feel it. Felix and Gertrude sat down on
the rust-colored carpet of pine-needles and talked of many things.
Felix spoke at last, in the course of talk, of his going away;
it was the first time he had alluded to it.

"You are going away?" said Gertrude, looking at him.

"Some day--when the leaves begin to fall. You know I can't stay forever."

Gertrude transferred her eyes to the outer prospect, and then,
after a pause, she said, "I shall never see you again."

"Why not?" asked Felix. "We shall probably both survive my departure."

But Gertrude only repeated, "I shall never see you again.
I shall never hear of you," she went on. "I shall know nothing about you.
I knew nothing about you before, and it will be the same again."

"I knew nothing about you then, unfortunately," said Felix.
"But now I shall write to you."

"Don't write to me. I shall not answer you," Gertrude declared.

"I should of course burn your letters," said Felix.

Gertrude looked at him again. "Burn my letters?
You sometimes say strange things."

"They are not strange in themselves," the young man answered.
"They are only strange as said to you. You will come to Europe."

"With whom shall I come?" She asked this question simply;
she was very much in earnest. Felix was interested in her earnestness;
for some moments he hesitated. "You can't tell me that," she pursued.
"You can't say that I shall go with my father and my sister;
you don't believe that."

"I shall keep your letters," said Felix, presently, for all answer.

"I never write. I don't know how to write." Gertrude, for some time,
said nothing more; and her companion, as he looked at her, wished it
had not been "disloyal" to make love to the daughter of an old gentleman
who had offered one hospitality. The afternoon waned; the shadows
stretched themselves; and the light grew deeper in the western sky.
Two persons appeared on the opposite side of the lake, coming from the house
and crossing the meadow. "It is Charlotte and Mr. Brand," said Gertrude.
"They are coming over here." But Charlotte and Mr. Brand only came
down to the edge of the water, and stood there, looking across;
they made no motion to enter the boat that Felix had left at the
mooring-place. Felix waved his hat to them; it was too far to call.
They made no visible response, and they presently turned away and walked
along the shore.

"Mr. Brand is not demonstrative," said Felix. "He is never demonstrative
to me. He sits silent, with his chin in his hand, looking at me.
Sometimes he looks away. Your father tells me he is so eloquent;
and I should like to hear him talk. He looks like such a noble young man.
But with me he will never talk. And yet I am so fond of listening
to brilliant imagery!"

"He is very eloquent," said Gertrude; "but he has no brilliant imagery.
I have heard him talk a great deal. I knew that when they saw us they
would not come over here."

"Ah, he is making la cour, as they say, to your sister?
They desire to be alone?"

"No," said Gertrude, gravely, "they have no such reason
as that for being alone."

"But why does n't he make la cour to Charlotte?" Felix inquired.
"She is so pretty, so gentle, so good."

Gertrude glanced at him, and then she looked at the distantly-seen couple
they were discussing. Mr. Brand and Charlotte were walking side by side.
They might have been a pair of lovers, and yet they might not.
"They think I should not be here," said Gertrude.

"With me? I thought you did n't have those ideas."

"You don't understand. There are a great many things you don't understand."

"I understand my stupidity. But why, then, do not Charlotte and Mr. Brand,
who, as an elder sister and a clergyman, are free to walk about together,
come over and make me wiser by breaking up the unlawful interview into which I
have lured you?"

"That is the last thing they would do," said Gertrude.

Felix stared at her a moment, with his lifted eyebrows.
"Je n'y comprends rien!" he exclaimed; then his eyes followed
for a while the retreating figures of this critical pair.
"You may say what you please," he declared; "it is evident to me
that your sister is not indifferent to her clever companion.
It is agreeable to her to be walking there with him.
I can see that from here." And in the excitement of observation
Felix rose to his feet.

Gertrude rose also, but she made no attempt to emulate her
companion's discovery; she looked rather in another direction.
Felix's words had struck her; but a certain delicacy checked her.
"She is certainly not indifferent to Mr. Brand; she has the highest
opinion of him."

"One can see it--one can see it," said Felix, in a tone
of amused contemplation, with his head on one side.
Gertrude turned her back to the opposite shore; it was disagreeable
to her to look, but she hoped Felix would say something more.
"Ah, they have wandered away into the wood," he added.

Gertrude turned round again. "She is not in love with him," she said;
it seemed her duty to say that.

"Then he is in love with her; or if he is not, he ought to be.
She is such a perfect little woman of her kind. She reminds
me of a pair of old-fashioned silver sugar-tongs; you know I
am very fond of sugar. And she is very nice with Mr. Brand;
I have noticed that; very gentle and gracious."

Gertrude reflected a moment. Then she took a great resolution.
"She wants him to marry me," she said. "So of course she is nice."

Felix's eyebrows rose higher than ever. "To marry you!
Ah, ah, this is interesting. And you think one must be very nice
with a man to induce him to do that?"

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