He almost saw his books and instruments look up at him reproachfully.

The ladies were at home.  Aurora herself opened the door, and Clotilde came forward from the bright fireplace with a cordiality never before so unqualified.  There was something about these ladies—­in their simple, but noble grace, in their half-Gallic, half-classic beauty, in a jocund buoyancy mated to an amiable dignity—­that made them appear to the scholar as though they had just bounded into life from the garlanded procession of some old fresco.  The resemblance was not a little helped on by the costume of the late Revolution (most acceptably chastened and belated by the distance from Paris).  Their black hair, somewhat heavier on Clotilde’s head, where it rippled once or twice, was knotted en Grecque, and adorned only with the spoils of a nosegay given to Clotilde by a chivalric small boy in the home of her music scholar.

“We was expectin’ you since several days,” said Clotilde, as the three sat down before the fire, Frowenfeld in a cushioned chair whose moth-holes had been carefully darned.

Frowenfeld intimated, with tolerable composure, that matters beyond his control had delayed his coming, beyond his intention.

“You gedd’n’ ridge,” said Aurora, dropping her wrists across each other.

Frowenfeld, for once, laughed outright, and it seemed so odd in him to do so that both the ladies followed his example.  The ambition to be rich had never entered his thought, although in an unemotional, German way, he was prospering in a little city where wealth was daily pouring in, and a man had only to keep step, so to say, to march into possessions.

“You hought to ‘ave a mo’ larger sto’ an’ some clerque,” pursued Aurora.

The apothecary answered that he was contemplating the enlargement of his present place or removal to a roomier, and that he had already employed an assistant.

“Oo it is, ’Sieur Frowenfel’?”

Clotilde turned toward the questioner a remonstrative glance.

“His name,” replied Frowenfeld, betraying a slight embarrassment, “is—­Innerarity; Mr. Raoul Innerarity; he is—­”

“Ee pain’ dad pigtu’ w’at ‘angin’ in yo’ window?”

Clotilde’s remonstrance rose to a slight movement and a murmur.

Frowenfeld answered in the affirmative, and possibly betrayed the faint shadow of a smile.  The response was a peal of laughter from both ladies.

“He is an excellent drug clerk,” said Frowenfeld defensively.

Whereat Aurora laughed again, leaning over and touching Clotilde’s knee with one finger.

“An’ excellen’ drug cl’—­ha, ha, ha! oh!”

“You muz podden uz, M’sieu’ Frowenfel’,” said Clotilde, with forced gravity.

Aurora sighed her participation in the apology; and, a few moments later, the apothecary and both ladies (the one as fond of the abstract as the other two were ignorant of the concrete) were engaged in an animated, running discussion on art, society, climate, education,—­all those large, secondary desiderata which seem of first importance to young ambition and secluded beauty, flying to and fro among these subjects with all the liveliness and uncertainty of a game of pussy-wants-a-corner.