but conversation thenceforth became impracticable. As I paced the alleys or sat in the berceau, a girl never came to my right hand but a teacher, as if by magic, appeared at my left. Also, wonderful to relate, madame's shoes of silence brought her continually to my back, as quick, noiseless, and unexpected, as some wandering zephyr.
The opinion of my Catholic acquaintance concerning my spiritual prospects was somewhat naïvely expressed to me on one occasion. A pensionnaire, to whom I had rendered some little service, exclaimed one day as she sat beside me:
"Mademoiselle, what a pity you are a Protestant!"
"Why, Isabelle?"
"Parce que, quand vous serez morte—vous brûlerez tout de suite dans l'Enfer."
"Croyez-vous?"
"Certainement que j'y crois: tout le monde le sait; et d'ailleurs le prêtre me l'a dit."
Isabelle was an odd, blunt little creature. She added, sotto voce:
"Pour assurer votre salut là-haut, on ferait bien de vous brûler toute vive ici-bas".
I laughed, as, indeed, it was impossible to do otherwise.
Has the reader forgotten Miss Ginerva Fanshawe? If so, I must be allowed to reintroduce that young lady as a thriving pupil of Madame Beck's, for such she was. On her arrival in the Rue Fossette, two or three days after my sudden settlement there, she encountered me with very little surprise. She must have had good blood in her veins, for never was any duchess more perfectly, radically, unaffectedly nonchalante than she: a weak, transient amaze was all she knew of the sensation of wonder. Most of her other faculties seemed to be in the same flimsy condition: her liking, and disliking, her love and hate, were mere cobweb and gossamer; but she had one thing about her that seemed strong and durable enough, and that was—her selfishness.
She was not proud; and—bonne d'enfants as I was—she would forthwith have made me a sort of friend and confidant. She teased me with a thousand vapid complaints about
