pleases me best.

"I liked the last," I declare; and with that, we are at the turnstile.

Hortense became a vision of something lost, a type of what I had known
when great ladies came to our country hall. M. Picot himself took her
on the grand tour of the Continent. How much we had been hoping to see
more of her I did not realize till she came back and we saw less.

Once I encountered M. Picot and his ward on the wharf. Her curls were
more wayward than of old and her large eyes more lustrous, full of
deep, new lights, dark like the flash of a black diamond. Her form
appeared slender against the long, flowing mantilla shot with gold like
any grand dame's. She wore a white beaver with plumes sweeping down on
her curls. Indeed, little Hortense seemed altogether such a great lady
that I held back, though she was looking straight towards me.

"Give you good-e'en, Ramsay," salutes M. Picot, a small, thin man with
pointed beard, eyebrows of a fierce curlicue, and an expression under
half-shut lids like cat's eyes in the dark. "Give you good-e'en! Can
you guess who this is?"

As if any one could forget Hortense! But I did not say so. Instead, I
begged leave to welcome her back by saluting the tips of her gloved
fingers. She asked me if I minded that drowning of Ben long ago. Then
she wanted to know of Jack.

"I hear you are fur trading, Ramsay?" remarks M. Picot with the
inflection of a question.