My landlady’s cap was as far removed from pretence as from vulgarity.  Her hair was brown, smooth, old-fashioned and nun-like.  I looked at her hand, which, having replaced the pen, was inviting me with a gesture of its handsome squared fingers to contribute my autograph, I made my note, pausing often to look up at my beautiful writing-mistress:  “Paul Flemming, American:  from Paris to Marly—­by way of the Rhine.”

I had not finished, when, lowering her pretty head to scrutinize my crabbed handwriting, she cried, “It is certainly he, the americain-flamand!  I was certain I could not be mistaken.”

“Do you know me then, madame?’

“Do I know you?  And you, do you not recognize me?”

“I protest, madame, my memory for faces is shocking; and, though there are few in the world comparable with yours—­”

She interrupted me with a gesture too familiar to be mistaken.  A tumbler was on the desk filled with goose-quills.  Taking this up like a bouquet, and stretching it out at arm’s length to an imaginary passer-by, she sang, with a mischievous professional brio, “Fresh roses to-day, all fresh!  White lilacs for the bride, and lilies for the holy altar! pinks for the button of the young man who thinks himself handsome.  Who buys my bluets, my paquerettes, my marguerites, my pensees?”

It was strangely like something I well knew, yet my mind, confused with the baggage of unexpected travel, refused to throw a clear light over this fascinating rencounter.

The little landlady threw her head back to laugh, and I saw a small rose-colored tongue surrounded with two strings of pearls:  “Very well, Monsieur Flemming!  Have you forgotten the two chickens?”

It was the exclamation by which, in his neat tavern, I had recognized my brave old friend Joliet:  it was impossible, by the same shibboleth, to refuse longer an acquaintance with his daughter.

My entertainer, in fact, was no other than Francine Joliet, grown from a little female stripling into a distracting pattern of a woman.  Twelve years had never thrown more fortunate changes over a growing human flower.

[Illustration:  A virtuoso.]

The acquaintance being thus renewed, I could not but remember my last conversation with Joliet—­his way of acquainting me with her absence from home, his mention of her godmother in Brussels, and his strange reticence as I pressed the subject.  A slight chill, owing perhaps to the undue warmth of my admiration for this delicate creature, fell over my first cordiality.  I asked a question or two, assuming a kind, elderly type of interest:  “How do you find yourself here in Carlsruhe?  Are you satisfactorily placed?”

“As well as possible, dear M. Flemming.  I am a bird in its nest.”

“Mated, no doubt, my dear?”

“No.”

“You are not a widow, I hope, my poor little Francine?”

“No.”  She blushed, as if she had not been pretty enough before.