I developed my idea without heeding this insinuation. “She’s a charming girl, but she’s a shrewd politician. It’s a necessity of her case. She’s less submissive to her mother than she has to pretend to be. That’s in self-defence. It’s to make her life possible.” “She wants to get away from her mother”—Madame Beaurepas so far confirmed me. “She wants to _courir les champs_.” “She wants to go to America, her native country.” “Precisely. And she’ll certainly manage it.” “I hope so!” I laughed. “Some fine morning—or evening—she’ll go off with a young man; probably with a young American.” “Allons donc!” I cried with disgust. “That will be quite America enough,” pursued my cynical hostess. “I’ve kept a boarding-house for nearly half a century. I’ve seen that type.” “Have such things as that happened chez vous?” I asked. “Everything has happened chez moi. But nothing has happened more than once. Therefore this won’t happen here. It will be at the next place they go to, or the next. Besides, there’s here no young American pour la partie—none except you, monsieur. You’re susceptible but you’re too reasonable.” “It’s lucky for you I’m reasonable,” I answered. “It’s thanks to my cold blood you escape a scolding!” One morning about this time, instead of coming back to breakfast at the pension after my lectures at the Academy, I went to partake of this meal with a fellow student at an ancient eating-house in the collegiate quarter. On separating from my friend I took my way along that charming public walk known in Geneva as the Treille, a shady terrace, of immense elevation, overhanging a stretch of the lower town. Here are spreading trees and well-worn benches, and over the tiles and chimneys of the _ville basse_ a view of the snow-crested Alps. On the other side, as you turn your back to the view, the high level is overlooked by a row of tall sober-faced _hôtels_, the dwellings of the local aristocracy. I was fond of the place, resorting to it for stimulation of my sense of the social scene at large. Presently, as I lingered there on this occasion, I became aware of a gentleman seated not far from where I stood, his back to the Alpine chain, which this morning was all radiant, and a newspaper unfolded in his lap. He wasn’t reading, however; he only stared before him in gloomy contemplation. I don’t know whether I recognised first the newspaper or its detainer; one, in either case, would have helped me to identify the other. One was the _New York Herald_—the other of course was Mr. Ruck. As I drew nearer he moved his eyes from the stony succession, the grey old high-featured house-masks, on the other side of the terrace, and I knew by the expression of his face just how he had been feeling about these distinguished abodes. He had made up his mind that their proprietors were a “mean” narrow-minded unsociable company that plunged its knotted roots into a superfluous past. I endeavoured