CHAPTER XIV
AN AMERICAN GIRL
The Marquise d'Esclignac saw that she had to reckon with an American girl. Those who know these girls know what their temper and mettle are, and that they are capable of the finest reverberations.
Julia Redmond was very young. Otherwise she would never have let Sabron go without one sign that she was not indifferent to him, and that she was rather bored with the idea of titles and fortunes. But she adored her aunt and saw, moreover, something else than ribbons and velvets in the make-up of the aunt. She saw deeper than the polish that a long Parisian lifetime had overlaid, and she loved what she saw. She respected her aunt, and knowing the older lady's point of view, had been timid and hesitating until now.
Now the American girl woke up, or rather asserted herself.
"My dear Julia," said the Marquise d'Esclignac, "are you sure that all the tinned things, the cocoa, and so forth, are on board? I did not see that box."
"Ma tante," returned her niece from her steamer chair, "it's the only piece of luggage I am sure about."
At this response her aunt suffered a slight qualm for the fate of the rest of her luggage, and from her own chair in the shady part of the deck glanced toward her niece, whose eyes were on her book.
"What a practical girl she is," thought the Marquise d'Esclignac. "She seems ten years older than I. She is cut out to be the wife of a poor man. It is a pity she should have a fortune. Julia would have been charming as love in a cottage, whereas I..."
She remembered her hotel on the Parc Monceau, her château by the Rhone, her villa at Biarritz—and sighed. She had not always been the Marquise d'Esclignac; she had been an American girl first and remembered that her maiden name had been De Puyster and that she had come from Schenectady originally. But for many years she had forgotten these things. Near to Julia Redmond these last few weeks all but courage and simplicity had seemed to have tarnish on its wings.