scribe them?"

"They are not French," I answered. "And they are not English."

"If she were English," said Clelie, "the girl would be more conscious of
herself, and of what we might possibly be saying. She is only conscious
that she is out of place and miserable. She does not care for us at all.
I have never seen Americans like them before, but I am convinced that
they are Americans."

She laid aside her working materials and proceeded to draw on her
gloves.

"We will go and look at that 'Tentation de St. Antoine' of Teniers," she
said, "and we may hear them speak. I confess I am devoured by an anxiety
to hear them speak."

According, a few moments later an amiable young couple stood before "La
Tentation," regarding it with absorbed and critical glances.

But the father and daughter did not seem to see us. They looked
disconsolately about them, or at the picture before which they sat.
Finally, however, we were rewarded by hearing them speak to each other.
The father addressed the young lady slowly and deliberately, and with an
accent which, but for my long residence in England and familiarity with
some forms of its _patois_, I should find it impossible to transcribe.

"Esmeraldy," he said, "your ma's a long time acomin'."

"Yes," answered the girl, with the same accent, and in a voice wholly
listless and melancholy, "she's a long time."

Clelie favored me with one of her rapid side glances. The study of
character is her grand passion, and her special weakness is a fancy
for the singular and incongruous. I have seen her stand in silence,
and regard with positive interest one of her former patronesses who
was overwhelming her with contumelious violence, seeming entirely
unconscious of all else but that the woman was of a species novel to
her, and therefore worthy of delicate observation.

"It is as I said," she whispered. "They are Americans, but of an order
entirely new."

Almost the next instant she touched my arm.

"Here is the mother!" she exclaimed. "She is coming this way. See!"

A woman advanced rapidly toward our part of the gallery,--a small, angry
woman, with an un graceful figure, and a keen brown eye. She began to
speak aloud while still several feet distant from the waiting couple.

"Come along," she said. "I've found a place at last, though I've been
all the morning at it,--and the woman who keeps the door speaks English.

"They call 'em," remarked the husband, meekly rising, "_con-ser-ges_.