“At the theatres, eh?” sighed the Countess. “At the _cafés-concerts_, at the little tables in front of the doors? _Quelle existence!_ You know I am a Parisienne, monsieur,” she added, “to my fingertips.” “Miss Spencer was mistaken, then,” I ventured to rejoin, “in telling me that you are a Provençale.” She stared a moment, then she put her nose to her embroidery, which had a dingy, desultory aspect. “Ah, I am a Provençale by birth; but I am a Parisienne by--inclination.” “And by experience, I suppose?” I said. She questioned me a moment with her hard little eyes. “Oh, experience! I could talk of experience if I wished. I never expected, for example, that experience had _this_ in store for me.” And she pointed with her bare elbow, and with a jerk of her head, at everything that surrounded her,--at the little white house, the quince-tree, the rickety paling, even at Mr. Mixter. “You are in exile!” I said, smiling. “You may imagine what it is! These two years that I have been here I have passed hours--hours! One gets used to things, and sometimes I think I have got used to this. But there are some things that are always beginning over again. For example, my coffee.” “Do you always have coffee at this hour?” I inquired. She tossed back her head and measured me. “At what hour would you prefer me to have it? I must have my little cup after breakfast.” “Ah, you breakfast at this hour?” “At midday--_comme cela se fait_. Here they breakfast at a quarter past seven! That ‘quarter past’ is charming!” “But you were telling me about your _coffee?_ I observed sympathetically. “My _cousine_ can’t believe in it; she can’t understand it. She’s an excellent girl; but that little cup of black coffee, with a drop of cognac, served at this hour,--they exceed her comprehension. So I have to break the ice every day, and it takes the coffee the time you see to arrive. And when it arrives, monsieur! If I don’t offer you any of it you must not take it ill. It will be because I know you have drunk it on the boulevard.” I resented extremely this scornful treatment of poor Caroline Spencer’s humble hospitality; but I said nothing, in order to say nothing uncivil. I only looked on Mr. Mixter, who had clasped his arms round his knees and was watching my companion’s demonstrative graces in solemn fascination. She presently saw that I was observing him; she glanced at me with a little bold explanatory smile. “You know, he adores me,” she murmured, putting her nose into her tapestry again. I expressed the promptest credence, and she went on. “He dreams of becoming my lover! Yes, it’s his dream. He has read a French novel; it took him six months. But ever since that he has thought himself the hero, and me the heroine!”