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Updated: May 12, 2025
This girl, so rash, and with a secret taste for danger, proved herself to be the most prudent as well as the most modest of women when thrown upon herself. In this she showed that vein of sound sense Scotch sense, probably that distinguished Madame Riano in spite of her vagaries.
And it was easy to see, in Francezka, those same sterling qualities of integrity, courage and generosity which distinguished Madame Riano, and with them infinitely more tact and suavity. The rains and the snows made all of us haunt the firesides of Capello. Every one of us felt that relaxing of the mind and body which accompanies a period of rest after action. Softer pleasures appealed to us.
I concluded that the chagrin Regnard had felt at losing Francezka was very deep and had much increased his distaste for his native country, but on the whole, his conduct appeared both unfeeling and ungenerous. Madame Riano oscillated between Paris and Brabant.
"So we have met but to part," she said, leaning out of the window, her delicate round chin on her hand. "We shall perhaps meet again, Mademoiselle," said I. "I think it will not be long before you will be setting out for Paris with Madame Riano. This, no doubt, will cure Madame Riano of traveling for the present." Francezka shook her head. "You do not know my aunt.
It was plain, however, that his prospects in that quarter were such as to warrant his taking a certain risk; and I believed he played fast and loose with the ladies slyly encouraging Madame Riano to go to Scotland, while ostensibly urging her to remain in Brabant. I asked him if his brother had yielded the field to him.
I mentioned that I had come across Jacques Haret, for I made no doubt the fellow would intrude himself upon us, and I wished to prepare Mademoiselle Capello for his advent. By my advice and Gaston Cheverny's, she had not mentioned to Madame Riano her acting in Jacques Haret's company in the garden.
Madame Riano, however, and Count Saxe, getting him between them, fairly intimidated him, and he was finally brought to consent, sulky and fuming, to paying only one-half of the money, the other half being due, by common honesty, from Mademoiselle Capello's great estates. Count Saxe meant, of course, to make the payment of Gaston's part as easy as possible to him.
She was fully sensible of her folly and danger in acting in his company, but the follies of a young girl of fourteen are easily excused. Scarcely had I spoken of Jacques Haret, when the door opened and the gentleman himself appeared. He had come to pay his respects to Madame Riano, to tell her the latest news of Paris, and, incidentally, to get his supper.
Another gleam of humor shot from Francezka's eyes when she told me that Madame Riano claimed to have had supernatural information in Scotland that a Kirkpatrick was in trouble, which brought her home; but Francezka thought that Madame Riano had by that time grown a little tired of her sojourn in the land of Goshen, as she represented Scotland to be.
She was not homely at all, contrary to my expectations, and had very soft shy eyes, that looked at one like the eyes of a bird that is shot. In a little while the rest of the party arrived. Francezka met Madame Riano and Count Saxe at the entrance to the château, assuming, from the beginning, the air of being chatelaine of her own house and she scarce sixteen!
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