England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
The name by which letters were addressed to her was "Mademoiselle
Jeromette." Among the ignorant people of the house and the small
tradesmen of the neighborhood--who found her name not easy of
pronunciation by the average English tongue--she was known by the
friendly nickname of "The French Miss." When I knew her, she was
resigned to her lonely life among strangers. Some years had elapsed
since she had lost her parents, and had left France. Possessing a small,
very small, income of her own, she added to it by coloring miniatures
for the photographers. She had relatives still living in France; but
she had long since ceased to correspond with them. "Ask me nothing
more about my family," she used to say. "I am as good as dead in my own
country and among my own people."
This was all--literally all--that she told me of herself. I have never
discovered more of her sad story from that day to this.
She never mentioned her family name--never even told me what part of
France she came from or how long she had lived in England. That she was
by birth and breeding a lady, I could entertain no doubt; her manners,
her accomplishments, her ways of thinking and speaking, all proved it.
Looking below the surface, her character showed itself in aspects not
common among young women in these days. In her quiet way she was an
incurable fatalist, and a firm believer in the ghostly reality of
apparitions from the dead. Then again in the matter of money, she had
strange views of her own. Whenever my purse was in my hand, she held me
resolutely at a distance from first to last. She refused to move into
better apartments; the shabby little house was clean inside, and the
poor people who lived in it were kind to her--and that was enough. The
most expensive present that she ever permitted me to offer her was a
little enameled ring, the plainest and cheapest thing of the kind in the
jeweler's shop. In all relations with me she was sincerity itself. On
all occasions, and under all circumstances, she spoke her mind (as the
phrase is) with the same uncompromising plainness.
"I like you," she said to me; "I respect you; I shall always be faithful
to you while you are faithful to me. But my love has gone from me. There
is another man who has taken it away with him, I know not where."
Who was the other man?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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