“I remember; there were two days you would not come down to dinner on pretence of headache, and you told me afterwards it was all ill humour.”
“Because I always tell you everything,” said she, with a smile so captivatingly beautiful, that it lit up her fave as the sun lights up a landscape.
“I am sorry, too,” said he, after a short silence, “that Mademoiselle should have gone away at this moment, for I am expecting visitors.”
“Visitors, Sir?”
“Yes, child; two distant, very distant relatives of mine are coming to-day; less, indeed, to see me than the place I live in. They are my heirs, Ma Mie; and the world says, no sort of people are less palatable to the man in possession, and, I take it, the world is right in the matter. When one thinks how he dislikes the man who keeps the newspaper too long at the club, it may be imagined how he is hated who keeps another out of an estate; and the sense of being so hated engenders something that is not friendship!”
“I think I can understand that feeling!” said she, thoughtfully.
“Every one knows,” continued he, “that when he is gone, the objects which he has loved and cherished—I mean the material objects, for I am talking as an old bachelor—will survive to give pleasure to others; but somehow he fancies—at least, I fancy—that the new incumbent will not know the full luxury of the shade under that sycamore where we sat yesterday to watch the fish in the pond; that he’ll never appreciate that Claude as I do, when I let a fresh blaze of sunlight on the opposite wall, and see it in a soft reflected light; and as to the delight of riding through these old wooded alleys as I feel it, he’ll not have you for a companion—eh, ma belle et bonne?”
She turned away her head. Was it shame, or sorrow, or both? Who knows? “What are your friends like?” asked she, suddenly.
“They are very like each other, and not like anything or any one else I ever met. They are, first of all, descendants of an old Huguenot family of excellent blood. Their ancestors settled here, and, like most others, they prospered. One became a Peer, but died without an heir, and the title became extinct. The present head of the house is this person I expect here to-day, with his son. He is a banker, as his son is. They are very rich, and very eager to be richer. Report says that they are not very generous or free-handed. My own experience can neither refute nor confirm the rumour. Their London house was very handsome when I saw it, and when I dined there everything bespoke the habits of wealth; but they had a sort of air of business in their reception, a look of doing something that was to redound to the bank, that I didn’t like. The company, too, was of that mixed character that showed they were less familiars than clients.”
“How intensely acute to detect all this at once!”