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Armand; he had been glad of the chance of doing that, of seeing Chaplot and his daughter and the others; but to be stopped at St. Armand a whole day he made exhibition of his anger, which Zilda took very meekly. Why had the affair not been telegraphed? Why were busy men like himself brought out of the city when they could not get on to do their work?
Afterwards, when the train was at the station, and Chaplot and Zilda had put his bags and his wraps beside him on a cushioned seat, Gilby turned and with great politeness accosted two fine ladies who were travelling in the same carriage and with whom he had a slight acquaintance.
They would not have anything to do with him, which offended him very much; they received his greeting coldly and turned away; they said within themselves that he was an intolerably vulgar little person. But all her life Zilda Chaplot lived a better and happier woman because she had known him. Some miles above the city of La Motte, the blue Merrian river widens into the Lake of St. Jean.
Zilda Chaplot was formed for pleasure, yet there is no tendency latent in her which could have made her a voluptuary. There are some natures which have so nice a proportion of faculties that they are a law of moderation to themselves. They take such keen delight in small pleasures that to them a little is enough.
He gave the key to his sister afterwards, and they used the room as their own; but that day he locked himself in alone, and, hiding his face in the cushions of her chair, he wept as only a strong man can weep. Mam'selle Zilda Chaplot keeps the station hotel at St. Armand, in the French country. The hotel is like a wooden barn with doors and windows, not a very large barn either.
Her complexion is brown; her eyes are very black; over them there is a fringe of iron-grey hair, which she does up in curl-papers every night, and which, in consequence, stands in very tight little curls all day. Mam'selle Chaplot minds her affairs well; she has a keen eye to the main chance. She is sometimes sharp, a trifle fiery, but on the whole she is good-natured.
The world has progressed by twenty years since mam'selle was a girl, and, also, she owns the place herself now, and is a much better inn-keeper than was her father. Mam'selle Chaplot is a very active person, tall, and somewhat stout.
The way of single blessedness is not chosen by Zilda Chaplot because of any fiction of loyalty to a quondam lover. Her mind is such that she could not have invented obligations for herself, because she has not the inventive faculty.
In some curious way their repetition lends to the stark road a certain grace. When Zilda Chaplot was young there were fewer wires on these telegraph poles, fewer railway-lines opposite the station, fewer houses in St. Armand, which lies half a mile away. The hotel itself is the same, but in those days it was not painted yellow, as it is now, and was not half so well kept.
He had not the slightest thought of making love to her; he felt too strongly on the subject of his dignity and his principles for that; but although he haggled with Chaplot over the bill, he talked in a bombastic manner about making Zilda a present.
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