She interrupted me with a gesture too familiar to be mistaken. A tumbler was on the desk filled with goose-quills. Taking this up like a bouquet, and stretching it out at arm's length to an imaginary passer-by, she sang, with a mischievous professional _brio_, "Fresh roses to-day, all fresh! White lilacs for the bride, and lilies for the holy altar! pinks for the button of the young man who thinks himself handsome. Who buys my bluets, my paquerettes, my marguerites, my penseés?" It was strangely like something I well knew, yet my mind, confused with the baggage of unexpected travel, refused to throw a clear light over this fascinating rencounter. The little landlady threw her head back to laugh, and I saw a small rose-colored tongue surrounded with two strings of pearls: "Very well, Monsieur Flemming! Have you forgotten the two chickens?" It was the exclamation by which, in his neat tavern, I had recognized my brave old friend Joliet: it was impossible, by the same shibboleth, to refuse longer an acquaintance with his daughter. My entertainer, in fact, was no other than Francine Joliet, grown from a little female stripling into a distracting pattern of a woman. Twelve years had never thrown more fortunate changes over a growing human flower. [Illustration: A VIRTUOSO.] The acquaintance being thus renewed, I could not but remember my last conversation with Joliet--his way of acquainting me with her absence from home, his mention of her godmother in Brussels, and his strange reticence as I pressed the subject. A slight chill, owing perhaps to the undue warmth of my admiration for this delicate creature, fell over my first cordiality. I asked a question or two, assuming a kind, elderly type of interest: "How do you find yourself here in Carlsruhe? Are you satisfactorily placed?" "As well as possible, dear M. Flemming. I am a bird in its nest." "Mated, no doubt, my dear?" "No." "You are not a widow, I hope, my poor little Francine?" "No." She blushed, as if she had not been pretty enough before. "They call you madame, you see." "A mistress of a hotel, that is the usual title. Is it not the custom among the Indians of America?" "The godmother who took care of you--you perceive how well I know your biography, my child--is she dead, then?" "No, thank Heaven! She is quite well." "She is doubtless now living in Carlsruhe?" "No, at Brussels." "Then why are you here? why have you quitted so kind a friend?" My catechism, growing thus more and more brutal, might have been prolonged until bedtime, but on the arrival of a new traveler she left me there, with a pen in my hand and a quantity of delicious cobwebs in my head, saying gently, "I will see you this evening, kind friend."