This was the personage who had replied to Mr. French's advertisement. There was no deception. She had stated her age plainly as twenty-two in her first letter to him; the mistake was on his part. In reading the hundred-and-fifty or so replies to his advertisement he had got mixed somehow, and had got some other lady's age in his head attached to the name of Grimshaw.
As for the spectacles, he had drawn in his imagination the portrait of a governess of forty-four named Grimshaw, and the portrait wore spectacles.
Miss Grimshaw didn't. Those clear, grey eyes would not require the aid of glasses for many a year to come.
American by birth, born in the State of Massachusetts, twenty-two years ago, Miss Grimshaw's people had "gone bust" in the railway collapse that followed the shooting of Garfield. Miss Grimshaw's father, a speculator by nature and profession, had been one of the chief "bulls" in Wall Street.
He had piled together a colossal fortune during the steady inflation of railway stock that preceded the death of Garfield. The pistol of Guiteau was the signal for the bottom to fall out of everything, and on that terrible Saturday afternoon when Wabash stock fell sixteen points without recovery, Curtis Grimshaw shot himself in his office, and V. Grimshaw, a tiny tot, was left in the world without father or mother, sister or brother, or any relations save an uncle in the dry-goods trade.
He had taken care of her and educated her at the best school he could find. Four years ago he had died, and V. Grimshaw at eighteen found herself again on the world, this time most forlorn. The happy condition remained, however, that Simon Gretry, the dry-goods uncle, had settled a thousand (dollars) a year on his niece, this small income being derived from real estate in New York city.
Miss Grimshaw emigrated to Europe, not to find a husband, but to study art in Paris. Six months' study told her, however, that art was not her walk in life, and being eminently practical, she cast aside her palette and took up with writing and literary work generally, working for Hardmuth's Press Syndicate and tiring of the work in a year.
Just after she had dropped Hardmuth's, Miss Grimshaw came upon Mr. French's advertisement in a lady's paper. Its ingenuousness entirely fascinated her.
"He's not literary, anyhow," she said. "It's the clearest bit of writing I've come across for many a day. Might try it. I've long been wanting to go to Ireland, and if I don't like it—why, I'm not tied to them."
Mr. French's reply to her application decided her, and so she came.