her raids among her friend's finery were quite in the spirit of her
baronial ancestors in the twelfth century--a spirit regarded by Euphemia
but as a large way of understanding friendship, a freedom from
conformities without style, and one that would sooner or later express
itself in acts of surprising magnanimity. There doubtless prevailed in
the breast of Mademoiselle de Mauves herself a dimmer vision of the
large securities that Euphemia envied her. She was to become later in
life so accomplished a schemer that her sense of having further heights
to scale might well have waked up early. The especially fine appearance
made by our heroine's ribbons and trinkets as her friend wore them
ministered to pleasure on both sides, and the spell was not of a nature
to be menaced by the young American's general gentleness. The concluding
motive of Marie's writing to her grandmamma to invite Euphemia for a
three weeks' holiday to the castel in Auvergne involved, however, the
subtlest considerations. Mademoiselle de Mauves indeed, at this time
seventeen years of age and capable of views as wide as her wants, was as
proper a figure as could possibly have been found for the foreground of
a scene artfully designed; and Euphemia, whose years were of like
number, asked herself if a right harmony with such a place mightn't come
by humble prayer. It is a proof of the sincerity of the latter's
aspirations that the castel was not a shock to her faith. It was neither
a cheerful nor a luxurious abode, but it was as full of wonders as a box
of old heirlooms or objects "willed." It had battered towers and an
empty moat, a rusty drawbridge and a court paved with crooked grass-
grown slabs over which the antique coach-wheels of the lady with the
hooked nose seemed to awaken the echoes of the seventeenth century.
Euphemia was not frightened out of her dream; she had the pleasure of
seeing all the easier passages translated into truth, as the learner of
a language begins with the common words. She had a taste for old
servants, old anecdotes, old furniture, faded household colours and