"'Yes, Miss Pearson is quite a personage here. Did you not see her at the Embassy? She has a boarding school for girls. But it is not such as they have in France. She takes only twenty-five select pupils in that fine house to which you escorted me last night. It is very expensive--two hundred and forty pounds a year. There are only young girls of the aristocracy there. The best masters in London come to instruct them. They ride and go into society. I was teaching music and French literature. My extreme love of Beethoven and Chateaubriand helped me, saved me. Now I am Miss Pearson's partner and friend. She is as kind as she is clever. You will dine with her this evening. "'You live together?' "'No, in England one has a better understanding of liberty than that. She has given me a little suite which has a private entrance. But we frequently invite each other.' "To end her short confidences, she added laughingly, as she blushed slightly: "'I am earning a great deal of money. At least for a woman. Would you have thought me capable of it when you came to my father's house to decipher our old charts for your history of Dauphiné? You made fun of my education then, which was quite scattered and broadened only by chance--' "'I did not laugh at you--' "'Oh, yes, you did--you disliked me very much then. Admit it.' "'You are mistaken. In any case you are mistaken now.' "It was quite unnecessary to modify by compliments the relation of good-fellowship which we had attained the evening before, and which English customs so willingly permit. She had the wisdom not to heed my remark, and following her own thoughts, she concluded: "'I have worked a great deal--' "I then asked her, not indiscreetly-- "'You left very suddenly eight or nine years ago. And you went at once to Miss Pearson?' "'No, not at once. Three years later.' "She looked at me, then lowered her head over the custard that had been served to her. But instead of taking the vanilla cream with her spoon, she mechanically put a piece of bread in her mouth. I watched her actions. Again I saw those evidences of distress which had struck me the evening before, and although I cannot explain it, I was convinced, with absolute certainty, that during those three years she had not always had enough to eat. "She had been obliged to travel the same road as I. "'We owe no more debts over there,' she answered with a little air of victory. 'So I can go back if I choose.' "I didn't answer these last words. I understood them better than anyone else. I, too, had known the satisfaction of paying off my father's last creditor with the proceeds of my own work. But for these inglorious struggles, I know one wants neither praise nor pity, and I spared her both.