"Of course I love Rhoda Polly, and so will you (and more than I love her) when your eyes are opened!" And with that I left Alida to digest the fact of her own selfishness. At the time I considered myself a kind of hero for having so spoken. Now I am not so sure. She was what Keller and Linn had made her, and I ought to have remembered the snubs and rebuffs which she must have suffered from Sous-Prefecture dames and other exacting though respectable ladies of Autun. * * * * * This week held many other matters and the seeds of more. Rhoda Polly came to take Alida out in her mother's Victoria, and spent a long day in the garden instead, sending back the coachman to be ready to take Mrs. Deventer to the works to drive her husband home to lunch, as was her daily custom. I do not know what the girls said to one another. I kept out of the way, but when I came into the dining-room with my father a little before noon, I was certain that Alida had been crying and that Rhoda Polly had been dabbing her eyes with hasty inexperienced fingers. I thought this no ill sign of coming friendship, and indeed it was not an hour before I received a first confidence on the subject from Alida. "She is all you say and more. She makes me so ashamed of myself!" "So she does me!" I answered, thinking of my dealings with Jeanne and our walk home from the restaurant of Mere Felix. Alida held out her hand quickly. "Does she make you feel that too?--I am glad," she said, and smiled gratefully like a child consoled. Then came Rhoda Polly's mother, and my father, who had been talking to Rhoda Polly by the sundial, rose and with a word and smile excused himself and went indoors. The interview that followed I should have loved well to watch and hear. But after all I doubt if any great part of the gentle influences which rained from Mrs. Deventer could have been written down. No stenographer could take note of those captivating intonations, the soft subtle pauses of speech, the lingering tender understanding in her motherly eyes, the way she had of laying her hand upon Alida's. She had been a counsellor to many, and had never forgotten a sore heart even when healed, nor told a tale out of that gracious confessional. Certain it is that the conquest of Alida was soon made, in so far as Mrs. Deventer could make it. They saw each other every day, and the sight of Rhoda Polly and Alida striking across the big bridge with the wind right in their faces--or of Alida, with Linn, like a gaunt watch-dog, thrusting a combative shoulder into the mistral to fend a way for her charge--became familiar on the windy sidewalks of the great suspension bridge.