“Excuse me if I speak of him so unceremoniously,” I said. “But you are really too generous, and he is not quite delicate enough. He made his debts himself; he ought to pay them himself.” “He has been foolish,” she answered; “I know that. He has told me everything. We had a long talk this morning; the poor fellow threw himself upon my charity. He has signed notes to a large amount.” “The more fool he!” “He is in extreme distress; and it is not only himself. It is his poor wife.” “Ah, he has a poor wife?” “I didn’t know it; but he confessed everything. He married two years since, secretly.” “Why secretly?” Caroline Spencer glanced about her, as if she feared listeners. Then softly, in a little impressive tone,--“She was a countess!” “Are you very sure of that?” “She has written me a most beautiful letter.” “Asking you for money, eh?” “Asking me for confidence and sympathy,” said Miss Spencer. “She has been disinherited by her father. My cousin told me the story, and she tells it in her own way, in the letter. It is like an old romance. Her father opposed the marriage, and when he discovered that she had secretly disobeyed him he cruelly cast her off. It is really most romantic. They are the oldest family in Provence.” I looked and listened in wonder. It really seemed that the poor woman was enjoying the “romance” of having a discarded countess-cousin, out of Provence, so deeply as almost to lose the sense of what the forfeiture of her money meant for her. “My dear young lady,” I said, “you don’t want to be ruined for picturesqueness’ sake?” “I shall not be ruined. I shall come back before long to stay with them. The Countess insists upon that.” “Come back! You are going home, then?” She sat for a moment with her eyes lowered, then with an heroic suppression of a faint tremor of the voice,--“I have no money for travelling!” she answered. “You gave it _all_ up?” “I have kept enough to take me home.” I gave an angry groan; and at this juncture Miss Spencer’s cousin, the fortunate possessor of her sacred savings and of the hand of the Provençal countess, emerged from the little dining-room. He stood on the threshold for an instant, removing the stone from a plump apricot which he had brought away from the table; then he put the apricot into his mouth, and while he let it sojourn there, gratefully, stood looking at us, with his long legs apart and his hands dropped into the pockets of his velvet jacket. My companion got up, giving him a thin glance which I caught in its passage, and which expressed a strange commixture of resignation and fascination,--a sort of perverted exaltation. Ugly, vulgar, pretentious, dishonest, as I thought the creature, he had appealed successfully to her eager and tender imagination. I was deeply disgusted, but I had no warrant to interfere, and at any rate I felt that it would be vain.