nk Miss Spencer must have encountered local
color in abundance. There was a crooked little court, where much of the
hospitality of the house was carried on; there was a staircase climbing
to bedrooms on the outer side of the wall; there was a small trickling
fountain with a stucco statuette in the midst of it; there was a little
boy in a white cap and apron cleaning copper vessels at a conspicuous
kitchen door; there was a chattering landlady, neatly laced, arranging
apricots and grapes into an artistic pyramid upon a pink plate. I looked
about, and on a green bench outside of an open door labelled _Salle a
Manger_, I perceived Caroline Spencer. No sooner had I looked at her
than I saw that something had happened since the morning. She was
leaning back on her bench, her hands were clasped in her lap, and her
eyes were fixed upon the landlady, at the other side of the court,
manipulating her apricots.

But I saw she was not thinking of apricots. She was staring absently,
thoughtfully; as I came near her I perceived that she had been crying.
I sat down on the bench beside her before she saw me; then, when she had
done so, she simply turned round, without surprise, and rested her sad
eyes upon me. Something very bad indeed had happened; she was completely
changed.

I immediately charged her with it. "Your cousin has been giving you bad
news; you are in great distress."

For a moment she said nothing, and I supposed that she was afraid to
speak, lest her tears should come back. But presently I perceived that
in the short time that had elapsed since my leaving her in the morning
she had shed them all, and that she was now softly stoical, intensely
composed.

"My poor cousin is in distress," she said at last. "His news was bad."
Then, after a brief hesitation, "He was in terrible want of money."

"In want of yours, you mean?"

"Of any that he could get--honestly. Mine was the only money."

"And he has taken yours?"

She hesitated again a moment, but her glance, meanwhile, was pleading.
"I gave him what I had."

I have always remembered the accent of those words as the most angelic
bit of human utterance I had ever listened to; but then, almost with a
sense of personal outrage, I jumped up. "Good heavens!" I said, "do you
call that getting, it honestly?"

I had gone too far; she blushed deeply. "We will not speak of it," she
said.

"We _must_ speak of it," I answered, sitting down again. "I am your
friend; it se