Barbara frowned a little. The setting of the story was too ornate, and seemed almost barbarous.
"And then?" she asked impatiently.
"Then—ah, then!" sighed the story-teller, who thought she was making a great impression—"then the sorrow came. As soon as his family knew, they were grievously angry, furiously wrathful, because she had no dot; and when she heard of their fury and wrath she nobly refused to marry him until he gained their consent. 'Never,' she cried" (and it was obvious that here mademoiselle was relying on her own invention), "'never will I marry thee against thy parents' wish.'"
She paused, and drew a long breath before proceeding. "A short time after this, the regiment of her lover was ordered out to India, in which pestiferous country he took a malicious fever and expired. She has no relatives left now, though so frail and delicate, but lives with an old maid in a very small domicile. She is cultivated to an extreme, and is so fond of music that, though her house is too small to admit of the pianoforte entering by the door, she had it introduced by the window of the salon, which had to be unbricked—the window, I mean. She has, moreover, three violins—one of which belonged to her ever-to-be-lamented fiancé—and, though she is too frail to stand, she will sit, when her health permits, and make music for hours together."
Mademoiselle Thérèse uttered the last words on the threshold of the house, and Barbara did not know whether to laugh or to cry at such a story being told in such a way. The door was opened by the old maid, Jeannette, who wore a quaint mob cap and spotless apron, and who followed the visitors into the room, and, having introduced them to her mistress, seated herself in one corner and took up her knitting as "company," Mademoiselle Thérèse whispered to Barbara.
The latter thought she had never before seen such a charming old lady as Mademoiselle Viré, who now rose to greet them, and she wondered how any one who had known her in the "many-churched Rouen days" could have parted from her.
She talked for a little while to Mademoiselle Thérèse, then turned gently to Barbara.
"Do you play, mademoiselle?"
"A little," the girl returned hesitatingly; "not enough, I'm afraid, to give great pleasure."
But Mademoiselle Viré rose with flushed cheeks.