“I've been used to work,” she said, “rough work all my life, and my hands aint like yours.” “But you must not be discouraged, Mademoiselle,” said Clélie gently. “Time”-- “Time,” interposed the girl, with a frightened look in her pretty gray eyes. “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 Clélie, with the greatest naïveté, 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 Clélie 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_,” Clélie 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.” Clélie 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 Clélie between her small shut teeth. “The woman is a fiend!” She was wholly absorbed in her study of this unworldly and untaught nature. She was full of sympathy for its trials and tenderness, and for its pain.