a greater part of
Euphemia's stay, so that the latter's angelic innocence was left all to
her grandson's mercy. It suffered no worse mischance, however, than to
be prompted to intenser communion with itself. Richard de Mauves was the
hero of the young girl's romance made real, and so completely accordant
with this creature of her imagination that she felt afraid of him almost
as she would have been of a figure in a framed picture who should have
stepped down from the wall. He was now thirty-three--young enough to
suggest possibilities of ardent activity and old enough to have formed
opinions that a simple woman might deem it an intellectual privilege to
listen to. He was perhaps a trifle handsomer than Euphemia's rather grim
Quixotic ideal, but a very few days reconciled her to his good looks as
effectually they would have reconciled her to a characterised want of
them. He was quiet, grave, eminently distinguished. He spoke little,
but his remarks, without being sententious, had a nobleness of tone that
caused them to re-echo in the young girl's ears at the end of the day.
He paid her very little direct attention, but his chance words--when he
only asked her if she objected to his cigarette--were accompanied by a
smile of extraordinary kindness.

It happened that shortly after his arrival, riding an unruly horse which
Euphemia had with shy admiration watched him mount in the castle-yard,
he was thrown with a violence which, without disparaging his skill, made
him for a fortnight an interesting invalid lounging in the library
with a bandaged knee. To beguile his confinement the accomplished young
stranger was repeatedly induced to sing for him, which she did with a
small natural tremor that might have passed for the finish of vocal
art. He never overwhelmed her with compliments, but he listened with
unfailing attention, remembered all her melodies and would sit humming
them to himself. While his imprisonment lasted indeed he passed hours in
her company, making her feel not unlike some unfriended artist who has
suddenly gained the opportunity to devote a fortnight to the study of a
great model. Euphemia studied with noiseless diligence what she supposed
to be the "character" of M. de Mauves, and the more she looked the
more fine lights and shades she seemed to behold in this masterpiece of
nature. M. de Mauves's character indeed, whether from a sense of being
so generously and intensely taken for granted, or for reasons wh