"That's what I can't bear to think of--the time that's to come."

This was the first of many outbursts of confidence. Afterward she
related to Clelie, with the greatest naivete, the whole history of the
family affairs.

They had been the possessors of some barren mountain lands in North
Carolina, and her description of their former life was wonderful indeed
to the ears of the Parisian. She herself had been brought up with
marvelous simplicity and hardihood, barely learning to read and
write, and in absolute ignorance of society. A year ago iron had been
discovered upon their property, and the result had been wealth and
misery for father and daughter. The mother, who had some vague fancies
of the attractions of the great outside world, was ambitious and
restless. Monsieur, who was a mild and accommodating person, could only
give way before her stronger will.

"She always had her way with us," said Mademoiselle Esmeralda,
scratching nervously upon the paper before her with her pencil, at this
part of the relation. "We did not want to leave home, neither me nor
father, and father said more than I ever heard him say before at one
time. 'Mother,' says he, 'let me an' Esmeraldy stay at home, an' you go
an' enjoy your tower. You've had more schoolin' an' you'll be more
at home than we should. You're useder to city ways, havin' lived in
'Lizabethville.' But it only vexed her. People in town had been talking
to her about traveling and letting me learn things, and she'd set her
mind on it."

She was very simple and unsophisticated. To the memory of her former
truly singular life she clung with unshaken fidelity. She recurred to
it constantly. The novelty and luxury of her new existence seemed
to have no attractions for her. One thing even my Clelie found
incomprehensible, while she fancied she understood the rest--she did not
appear to be moved to pleasure even by our beloved Paris.

"It is a true _maladie du pays_," Clelie remarked to me. "_And that is
not all_."

Nor was it all. One day the whole truth was told amid a flood of tears.

"I--I was going to be married," cried the poor child. "I was to
have been married the week the ore was found. I was--all ready, and
mother--mother shut right down on us."

Clelie glanced at me in amazed questioning.

"It is a kind of _argot_ which belongs only to Americans," I answered in
an undertone. "The alliance was broken off."

"_Ciel!_" exclaimed my Clelie between her small shut