ed when he had to acknowledge his
mistake. He would often say that it was quite a different thing to be
"amoureux d'une femme," and to "aimer une femme"--to be in love with, or
to love a woman. And then, dear old mystic that he was at the bottom of
his heart, he would conjure up a "Vision of Love," as he called it, a
vision to be "divined, not defined." Was he ever to marry and be happy?
I often wondered.

When I arrived in Paris, I found Claude at the station, and we embraced
in true continental fashion. I had been invited to stay with him and his
father, and I was soon established under their hospitable roof.

The first twenty-four hours we slept little and talked much. I knew all
about the picture and all about a new star in his horizon, Mademoiselle
Jeanne, but what is _all_ when it is crammed into the few pages of a
letter? Very little as compared with what can be made of it in
conversation.

Of the picture later on; first about the girl. Mademoiselle Jeanne was
the daughter of the _grand Roule_; so we had called her father, for no
better reason than that his charming residence was in the Faubourg du
Roule.

He was one of the leading physicians in Paris, more particularly known
by his writings, which treated of some pathological speciality, I forget
which. Her mother was an Englishwoman. During a twenty years' residence
in Paris she had added to the sterling qualities of her race the
graceful attributes of a Parisian. She was not only a charming hostess,
but a woman of great literary attainments, and indeed she must have been
more than that, an erudite scholar, if, as the world said, some of the
best pages in the doctor's books came from her pen. He gave colour to
the assertion, for by word and deed he showed that he held her and her
judgment in the highest esteem. It was quite a pleasure to see this
united couple together, a pleasure I often enjoyed, for during my first
long stay in Paris I had been made quite at home in their house.

Jeanne, or, as her mother persisted in calling her, Jane, was about
sixteen when I first knew her. She was reserved and diffident; happiest
when allowed to remain unnoticed in the background, positively
distressed when dragged into broad daylight, or obliged to take her
share in gaieties. I soon discovered the cause of her shyness. She
suffered from the consciousness that she had red hair; in fact that
consciousness seemed to have sunk deep into her heart and mind, and to
have