Man and Maid

The Duchesse was playing impatiently with her glasses when I was

announced by the servant of ninety! Her face expressed some strong

feeling. I was not sure if it was tinged with displeasure or no. She

helped me to sit down, and then she began at once.

"Nicholas, explain yourself. You tell me you are engaged to your

secretary! So this has been going on all the time, and you have not told

me. I, who was your mother's oldest friend!"

"Dear Duchesse, you are mistaken, it has only just been settled. No one

was more surprised at my offer than Miss Sharp herself."

"You know her real name, Nicholas? And her family history? You have

guessed, of course, from my asking you for the twenty-five thousand

francs, that they were in some difficulty?"

"Yes, I know Alathea is the daughter of the Honorable Robert and Lady

Hilda Bulteel."

"She has told you all of the story, perhaps?--but you cannot know what

the money was for, because the poor child does not know it herself. It

is more just that I should inform you, since you are going to marry into

the family."

"Thank you, Duchesse."

She then began, and gave me a picture of her old friendship with Lady

Hilda, and of the dreadful calamity which had befallen in her going off

with Bobby Bulteel.

"It was one of those cases of mad love, Nicholas, which fortunately seem

to have died out of the modern world, though for the truth I must say

that one more séduisant than ce joli Bulteel, I have never met! One

could not, of course, acknowledge them for a crime like that, but I have

ever been fond of poor Hilda and that sweet little child. She was born

here, in this hotel. Poor Hilda came to me in her great trouble, and I

was in deep mourning myself then for my husband,--the house is large,

and it could all pass quietly."

I reached forward and took the Duchesse's hand and kissed it, and she

went on: "Alatheé is my godchild, one of my names is Alatheé. The poor little

one, she adored her father, in all those first years. They wandered much

and only came to Paris at intervals, and each time they came, a little

poorer, a little more troubled, and then after a lapse I heard those two

were born at Nice--wretched little decadents, when my poor Hilda was a

mass of nerves and disillusion. Alatheé was eleven then. It was, par

hazard, when she was about fourteen that she heard of her father's

crime. She was the gayest, most sweet child before that, through all

their poverty, but from that moment her character was changed. It

destroyed something in her spirit, one must believe. She set firmly to

education, decided she would be a secretary, cultivated herself, worked,

worked, worked! She worshipped her mother, and resented immensely her

father's treatment of her."