Of her beauty Laline was unconscious; a few artists had sketched her from memory, and she had seen the sketches, and wondered whether her hair really looked like that in the sunshine. But she had read Ivanhoe and other novels by Walter Scott, and her ideal of loveliness was the black-haired type with sloping shoulders, alabaster brow, eyes black as night, and the smallest possible mouth.
French romances, except some especially goody-goody stories avowedly intended for the very young, were altogether unknown to her. Captain Garth respected the child-like innocence of his daughter's mind and locked up his amusing paper-covered novels. Of her father's sporting and card-playing associates Laline knew but little. Captain Garth received visitors in his den, which the girl never entered unless her father was the sole occupant of the room. He would have wished to pose before her as a high-minded, hardworking, and honourable gentleman, driven from his country and his equals by the envious spite of a cabal and the undeserved blows of "outrageous fortune;" but when he vapoured to his little girl concerning his high principles and unrecognised genius, Laline said never a word, and contented herself with scanning him with soft eyes which saw outer things but dimly, but which seemed to have the gift at times of divining the hidden spirit beyond.
Walking down the rough stone-paved street on this particular midsummer day, Laline's thoughts busied themselves with the figure of Wallace Armstrong the tallest, handsomest Englishman to whom she had ever yet spoken. No self-consciousness touched her mind; she knew quite well that both Mr. Armstrong and her father regarded her as a child, and she had not the slightest wish to develop into a "young lady," fenced in with conventional proprieties. Captain Garth so seldom introduced any of his associates to her that that fact alone was sufficient to attract her notice; and then this powerfully-built young man with the black brows, drooping black moustache, brilliant eyes, and saturnine expression at once interested the girl from his resemblance to her ideal of the Templar in Ivanhoe.
Mr. Wallace Armstrong could not be very good, she decided. Her knowledge of evil was limited, but she opined that he played cards, and put money on horses and swore when they lost, and that he drank cognac, and perhaps did not pay his bills. His voice had sounded gentle enough in speaking to her, but rough and scornful when he addressed her father. Just so must Brian de Bois-Guilbert's voice have rung out, harsh and imperious, when he rated Rebecca's father. And yet Laline began to wonder at the fair Jewess's invincible dislike against the Templar. Meantime her little high-heeled feet had taken her to Monsieur Desjardins's, and the old man behind the counter, grumbling, took the money she proffered, and bade her remind her father that his little account had long been unsettled.
"La p'tite Gart is growing too tall for her short skirts," his wife remarked, as Laline left the shop. "She becomes une très-jolie fille, and will soon be wanting a nice little beau."
"Bah! It is a child!" responded her husband. "In England they do not think of love and marriage until they are old maids of five- or six-and-twenty. Mam'selle Laline has a good ten years yet."
Déjeuner at Rue Planché was a success that day. Laline cooked to perfection, and waited at table deftly. At the latter arrangement Wallace Armstrong demurred. He disliked to see so pretty a girl made into a household drudge; but Laline explained that Bénoîte's snuff-taking proclivities rendered her an undesirable waitress. She did not add that the household resources were at so low an ebb that cutlets at luncheon were a luxury she could not permit herself; she contented herself with assuring Mr. Armstrong that she had already partaken of luncheon, dignifying by that name a plate of thin vegetable soup and a piece of stale bread in the kitchen.
Eating made Wallace more hopeful. After all, as Captain Garth reminded him, he was six-and-twenty, and nephew to one of the richest men in London. No man was worthy the name, so the elder declared, who had not "sown his wild oats;" and the prodigal son, or prodigal nephew, as the case might be, was always the favourite in the end. Card-playing was not an exciting pastime between two men, neither of whom possessed any money or any immediate certainty of procuring any; but habit made them gamble away the sunny hours of a midsummer afternoon until five o'clock, when Armstrong suggested that they should stroll down to the hotel where he had been staying since his arrival in Boulogne three days before, and ascertain whether by chance there was any answer to his appeal to his uncle.
With characteristic improvidence, Wallace Armstrong had put up at an hotel which, although not specially dear as summer seaside prices go, was most certainly far beyond his means. Since his arrival at this establishment, which was under French management and faced the Museum in the Grand Rue, the big shabby young Englishman had consumed hardly any food, but a large amount of drinks, and the patron within the office in the hall eyed him askance as he approached and inquired for letters.