"How did it come?" Gano demanded.
"Quite quietly; no pain—no pain at the last."
Her muffled voice seemed to reach him from far off.
"Why didn't you call me?"
"No good," she said, tonelessly; "and besides, he held fast to my hand. I am leaving some money here." She motioned to the little pile of ten and twenty franc pieces on the table, and moved towards the door. "You'll see to what's necessary." And, without waiting for his assurance, "I've enough to pay for everything," she said, and went out.
Gano found his first impressions weakened by Mary Burne's clear and convincing official account of the death. The doctor accepted it without misgiving. Why should a layman have a doubt?
Driscoll was buried, and his few effects were bought in by Mary Burne at the sale. When Gano went to say good-bye to her the next day he was told she had given up her old lodging, and left no address behind.
Gano's original reluctance to return home had not been so very serious. Had his grandfather been a little forbearing, he could have had the young man back in Boston in six months; but now, too much had been sacrificed on the altar of an impetuous resolve for Gano to consider kindly going to America at once. There was plenty of time for that. He had sent instructions to Messrs. Bostwick & Allen, and he allowed the "great political organ" to remain in the experienced hands that had done so well by it in Aaron Tallmadge's declining years.
He went to Nice, and brought the De Poincys back with him to Paris, where he had taken a house. Henri de Poincy, even when little by little he learned something of those years of struggle, could not see that his friend was essentially changed by their rough lessoning. Ethan had never, even in the ignorant and care-free days, been either very outgoing or very light of heart. De Poincy, as the elder, had long ago recognized his friend as one of those unexpected, but not uncommon, products of luxurious modern life—a young man whose vivid perception of the underlying tragedy of the common lot had seemed out of all proportion to his possible experience. If any difference appeared in him now, it was that his old easy faith in concrete human nature, as opposed to his deep mistrust of life in the abstract, had been somewhat corrected—and that was well, Henri de Poincy thought. The young diplomat did not discover that, of all the faith-destroying spectacles his friend had looked upon, not the least, to just his cast of mind, was the hot haste made, in that same city where he had walked wanting bread, to court and fête the new millionaire. But Gano had left this phase of life so far behind him, he had got so out of touch with it, that he was obliged to learn over and over again that inevitable lesson taught affluent young America by the sage Old World—that money-bags are less easily and quickly filled in Europe, and the man who carries one that overflows will lack little that the craftier civilization can lay at his feet. Gano's particular kind of self-love revolted at some of his experiences at the hands of certain elegant and well-born adventurers, male and female, who, the American had fancied, liked him and sought him for himself. He was very young in many ways, for all his hardships and his twenty-six years. Still, he was not so much of a fool but that in time he learned his lesson. His fault lay in taking it too seriously. So it was that, despite his renewed literary activities and successes, and the need impressed on him of studying les mœurs, he yielded more and more to his fondness for camping out, for fishing, and for cruising about the Mediterranean with Henri de Poincy.