m that he happened to
be one of the best-looking and most agreeable young men in the world.
They did nothing but say, 'I told you so!' for years, whenever anything
disastrous happened--as it constantly did, for poor papa and mamma loved
each other so much, and had so much fun, that they couldn't have time
to be business-like. My cousins thought everything mamma did was a
madness--such as sending me to the most fashionable convent school in
France. As if I hadn't to be educated! And then, when the castle fell so
to bits that tourists wouldn't bother with it any more, and nobody but
rats would live in the Paris house unless it was repaired--and poor papa
was killed in a horrid little Saturday-to-Monday war of no importance
(except to people whose hearts it broke)--oh! I believe the cousins were
glad! They thought it was a judgment. That happened years ago, when I
was only fifteen, and though they've plenty of money (more than most
people in the American colony) they didn't offer to help; and mamma
would have died sooner than ask. I had to be snatched out of school, to
find that all the beautiful dreams of being a happy _debutante_ must go
by contraries. We lived in the tumble-down house ourselves, mamma and I,
and her friends rallied round her--she was so popular and pretty. They
got her chances to give singing lessons, and me to do translating, and
painting _menus_. We were happy again, after a while, in spite of all,
and people were so good to us! Mamma used to hold a kind of _salon_,
with all the brightest and best crowding to it, though they got nothing
but sweet biscuits, _vin ordinaire_, and conversation--and besides, the
house might have taken a fancy to fall down on their heads any minute.
It was sporting of them to come at all!"

"And the cousins. Did they come?"

"Not they! They're of the society of the little Brothers and Sisters of
the Rich. Their set was quite different from ours. But when mamma died
nearly two years ago, and I was alone, they did call, and Cousin Emily
offered me a home. I was to give up all my work, of course, which she
considered degrading, and was simply to make myself useful to her as a
daughter of the house might do. That was what she _said_."

"You accepted?"

"Yes. I didn't know her and her husband as well as I do now; and before
she died mamma begged me to go to them, if they asked me. That was when
Monsieur Charretier came on the scene--at least, he came a few months
later, and