these occasions that under the great
carriage gateway Lady Ded-- I mean Madame Delestang, catching sight of
my raised hat, would beckon me with an amiable imperiousness to the side
of the carriage, and suggest with an air of amused nonchalance, "Venez
donc faire un tour avec nous," to which the husband would add an
encouraging "C'est ca. Allons, montez, jeune homme." He questioned me
sometimes, significantly but with perfect tact and delicacy, as to the
way I employed my time, and never failed to express the hope that I
wrote regularly to my "honoured uncle." I made no secret of the way I
employed my time, and I rather fancy that my artless tales of the pilots
and so on entertained Madame Delestang, so far as that ineffable woman
could be entertained by the prattle of a youngster very full of his new
experience amongst strange men and strange sensations. She expressed no
opinions, and talked to me very little; yet her portrait hangs in the
gallery of my intimate memories, fixed there by a short and fleeting
episode. One day, after putting me down at the corner of a street, she
offered me her hand, and detained me by a slight pressure, for a moment.
While the husband sat motionless and looking straight before him, she
leaned forward in the carriage to say, with just a shade of warning in
her leisurely tone: "Il faut, cependant, faire attention a ne pas gater
sa vie." I had never seen her face so close to mine before. She made
my heart beat, and caused me to remain thoughtful for a whole evening.
Certainly one must, after all, take care not to spoil one's life. But
she did not know--nobody could know--how impossible that danger seemed
to me.

Chapter VII.

Can the transports of first love be calmed, checked, turned to a cold
suspicion of the future by a grave quotation from a work on Political
Economy? I ask--is it conceivable? Is it possible? Would it be right?
With my feet on the very shores of the sea and about to embrace my
blue-eyed dream, what could a good-natured warning as to spoiling one's
life mean to my youthful passion? It was the most unexpected and the
last too of the many warnings I had received. It sounded to me very
bizarre--and, uttered as it was in the very presence of my enchantress,
like the voice of folly, the voice of ignorance. But I was not so
callous or so stupid as not to recognise there also the voice of
kindness. And then the vagueness of the warning--because what can be the
meaning of th