me," I said, "that this wretched man is going to give you
bad news!"

"I suspect it is a little bad, but I don't believe it is very bad. At
any rate, I must listen to it."

I looked at her again an instant. "You did n't come to Europe to
listen," I said. "You came to see!" But now I was sure her cousin
would come back; since he had something disagreeable to say to her, he
certainly would turn up. We sat a while longer, and I asked her about
her plans of travel She had them on her fingers' ends, and she told over
the names with a kind of solemn distinctness: from Paris to Dijon and
to Avignon, from Avignon to Marseilles and the Cornice road; thence to
Genoa, to Spezia, to Pisa, to Florence, to Home. It apparently had
never occurred to her that there could be the least incommodity in her
travelling alone; and since she was unprovided with a companion I of
course scrupulously abstained from disturbing her sense of security.
At last her cousin came back. I saw him turn towards us out of a side
street, and from the moment my eyes rested upon him I felt that this was
the bright American art-student. He wore a slouch hat and a rusty black
velvet jacket, such as I had often encountered in the Rue Bonaparte. His
shirt-collar revealed the elongation of a throat which, at a distance,
was not strikingly statuesque. He was tall and lean; he had red hair and
freckles. So much I had time to observe while he approached the _cafe_,
staring at me with natural surprise from under his umbrageous coiffure.
When he came up to us I immediately introduced myself to him as an old
acquaintance of Miss Spencer. He looked at me hard with a pair of little
red eyes, then he made me a solemn bow in the French fashion, with his
sombrero.

"You were not on the ship?" he said.

"No, I was not on the ship. I have been in Europe these three years."

He bowed once more, solemnly, and motioned me to be seated again. I sat
down, but it was only for the purpose of observing him an instant; I saw
it was time I should return to my sister. Miss Spencer's cousin was a
queer fellow. Nature had not shaped him for a Raphaelesque or Byronic
attire, and his velvet doublet and naked neck were not in harmony with
his facial attributes. His hair was cropped close to his head; his ears
were large and ill-adjusted to the same. He had a lackadaisical carriage
and a sentimental droop which were peculiarly at variance with his keen,
strange-colored eyes. Perhaps I was pr