riend Joliet: it was impossible, by the same shibboleth,
to refuse longer an acquaintance with his daughter.

My entertainer, in fact, was no other than Francine Joliet, grown
from a little female stripling into a distracting pattern of a woman.
Twelve years had never thrown more fortunate changes over a growing
human flower.

[Illustration: A VIRTUOSO.]

The acquaintance being thus renewed, I could not but remember my last
conversation with Joliet--his way of acquainting me with her absence
from home, his mention of her godmother in Brussels, and his strange
reticence as I pressed the subject. A slight chill, owing perhaps to
the undue warmth of my admiration for this delicate creature, fell
over my first cordiality. I asked a question or two, assuming a kind,
elderly type of interest: "How do you find yourself here in Carlsruhe?
Are you satisfactorily placed?"

"As well as possible, dear M. Flemming. I am a bird in its nest."

"Mated, no doubt, my dear?"

"No."

"You are not a widow, I hope, my poor little Francine?"

"No." She blushed, as if she had not been pretty enough before.

"They call you madame, you see."

"A mistress of a hotel, that is the usual title. Is it not the custom
among the Indians of America?"

"The godmother who took care of you--you perceive how well I know your
biography, my child--is she dead, then?"

"No, thank Heaven! She is quite well."

"She is doubtless now living in Carlsruhe?"

"No, at Brussels."

"Then why are you here? why have you quitted so kind a friend?"

My catechism, growing thus more and more brutal, might have been
prolonged until bedtime, but on the arrival of a new traveler she left
me there, with a pen in my hand and a quantity of delicious cobwebs in
my head, saying gently, "I will see you this evening, kind friend."

The same evening, after a botanizing stroll in the adjoining wood--a
treat that my tin box and I had promised each other--I found myself
again with Francine. Full of curiosity as I was concerning her
adventures, I determined that she should direct the conversation
herself, and take her own pretty time to tell the more personal parts
of the story.

The stage grisette is perpetually exploring the pockets of her apron.
Francine, who wore a roundabout apron of a white and crackling nature,
adorned her conversation by attending to the hem of hers. When she
asked about my last interview with her father, she ironed that
hem with the nail of h