"I think it would be in very dead earnest if he did," said Pauline, speaking up with a gay laugh; and Mr. Varick laughed, too, relishing her pert joke. He paid her some gallant compliments as he stood at her side, though she thought them stiff and antique in sound, notwithstanding the foreign word or phrase that was so apt to tinge them. She found Mr. Varick pleasantest when he was asking after her sick mother, and telling her what New York gayeties used to be before the beginning of his long European absence. He had a tripping, lightsome mode of speech, that somehow suited the jaunty upward sweep of his white mustache. He would oscillate both hands in a graceful style as he talked. Elegant superficiality flowed from him without an effort. It needed no keenness to tell that he had been floating buoyantly on the top crest of the wave, and well amid its froth, all his life. He made no pretense to youth; he would, indeed, poke fun at his own seniority, with a relentless and breezy sort of melancholy.
"Did you ever hear of a French poet named Francois Villon," he said to Pauline, dropping into a seat at her side that some departure had just left vacant. "No, I dare say you've not. He was a dreadful chap—a kind of polisson, as we say, but he wrote the most charming ballads; I believe he was hanged afterward, or ought to have been—I forget which. One of his songs had a sad little refrain that ran thus: 'Où sont les neiges d'antan?'—'Where are the snows of last year?' you know. Well, mademoiselle—no, Miss Pauline, I mean—that line runs in my head to-night. Ça me gêne—it bothers me. I want to have the good things of youth back again. I come home to New York, and find my snow all melted. Everything is changed. I feel like a ghost—a merry old ghost, however. Tenez—just wait a bit. Do you think those nice young gentlemen will have anything to say to you after they have seen you a little longer in my company? I'm sure I have frightened four or five of them away. They're asking each other, now, who is that old épouvantail—what is the word?—scarecrow. Ah! voilà—here comes one much bolder than the rest. I will have mercy on him—and retire. But before my départ I have a favor to request of you. You will give mamma my compliments? You will tell her that I shall do myself the honor of calling upon her? Thanks, very much. We shall be ghosts together, poor mamma and I; you need not be chez vous when I call, unless you are quite willing—that is, if you are afraid of ghosts."
"Oh, I'm not," laughed Pauline. "I don't believe in them, Mr. Varick."
"That is delightful for you to say!" her companion exclaimed. "It means that you will listen for a little while to our spectral conversation and not find it too ennuyeuse. How very kind of you! Ah! we old fellows are sometimes very grateful for a few crumbs of kindness!"
"You can have a whole loaf from me, if you want," said Pauline, with an air of girlish diversion.
Not long afterward she declared to her cousin, Courtlandt: "I like the old gentleman ever so much, Court. He's a refreshing change. You New York men are all cut after the same pattern."
"I'm afraid he's cut with a rather crooked scissors," said Courtlandt, who indulged in a sly epigram oftener than he got either credit or discredit for doing.
"Oh," said Pauline, as if slowly understanding. "You mean he is French, I suppose."
"Quite French, they report."
Mr. Varick made his promised visit upon Pauline and her mother sooner than either of them expected. Mrs. Van Corlear was rather more ill than usual, on the day he appeared, and almost the full burden of the ensuing conversation fell upon her daughter.