“And why should he not be?” Alix inquired. She took off her hat and the morning breeze blew back her hair. “Well, I’m a rather unprepossessing young foreigner. I shouldn’t have known how to be kind to him.” “He is quicker on the surface than you are, Giles; but you are quite as quick beneath it, and deeper far, I feel sure,” said Alix. “Hang it!” said Giles, laughing, “how do you manage to think these things at your age?” “I am of an age, it appears, to have monsieur de Valenbois discuss my appearance in my presence,” said Alix. “Oh—but just because you are so young,” Giles, already alarmed for the good fortune of his romance, protested. “Ah, but if I were as young as you mean, I should not be worth discussing,” Alix returned. Giles glanced at her from the tail of his eye. How young, how old, indeed, was Alix. His sense of a suffering only biding its time to spring upon her came strongly to him as he scanned surreptitiously the high young face that seemed to soar beside him, the vast background lending an added haughtiness to its delicate projections. How French, how French she was; how much a foreigner with all her familiarity; so much so that he could not, even now, foresee what she would feel, what love, what suffer. “And monsieur Jules;—I’ve never heard anyone call him anything but Jules.—And mademoiselle Fontaine? Give me your impressions of all these people,” he said. “They are so strange and new to me.” “Poor Jules. I am fond of him. Very. I have known him for many years,” said Alix. “Ever since Maman admired a picture of his and bought it and then found him, starving, with his little wife. Maman has been their good angel always. Success is coming to him now; now when it is too late. And mademoiselle Fontaine is an old _habituée_ of Maman’s salon. I have not seen her in the country before. She has taken this little villa for the summer to be near Maman. She does not seem to belong to the country. We will go one day to have tea with her and her mother and old grandmother and see the little ‘fox,’” Alix added. “Her grandmother knew Chopin. She will tell you so at once; and George Sand. She was an actress, too. I do not think that I care much for actresses.” “And was mademoiselle Fontaine’s mother an actress?” “Oh, not at all. Her mother is quite different. _Une bonne petite bourgeoise tout simplement_; quite insignificant and creeping. They both adore the grandmother. You must see them,” Alix repeated, a slight amusement on her lips, as if she spoke of quaint animals she had to display to her friend.