Paris, February 13.—­It is evening.  I have just returned from St. Germain.  Everything is settled—­with more slyness on my part.  I begin to think I am a born Jesuit; there must have been some detestable sympathy between Father Benwell and me.

My good friends, Monsieur and Madame Villeray, will be only too glad to receive English ladies, known to me for many years.  The spacious and handsome first floor of their house (inherited from once wealthy ancestors by Madame Villeray) can be got ready to receive Mrs. Eyrecourt and her daughter in a week’s time.  Our one difficulty related to the question of money.  Monsieur Villeray, living on a Government pension, was modestly unwilling to ask terms; and I was too absolutely ignorant of the subject to be of the slightest assistance to him.  It ended in our appealing to a house-agent at St. Germain.  His estimate appeared to me to be quite reasonable.  But it exceeded the pecuniary limit mentioned by Mrs. Eyrecourt.  I had known the Villerays long enough to be in no danger of offending them by proposing a secret arrangement which permitted me to pay the difference.  So that difficulty was got over in due course of time.

We went into the large garden at the back of the house, and there I committed another act of duplicity.

In a nice sheltered corner I discovered one of those essentially French buildings called a “pavilion,” a delightful little toy house of three rooms.  Another private arrangement made me the tenant of this place.  Madame Villeray smiled.  “I bet you,” she said to me in her very best English, “one of these ladies is in her fascinating first youth.”  The good lady little knows what a hopeless love affair mine is.  I must see Stella sometimes—­I ask, and hope for, no more.  Never have I felt how lonely my life is, as I feel it now.

Third Extract.

London, March 1.—­Stella and her mother have set forth on their journey to St. Germain this morning, without allowing me, as I had hoped and planned, to be their escort.

Mrs. Eyrecourt set up the old objection of the claims of propriety.  If that were the only obstacle in my way, I should have set it aside by following them to France.  Where is the impropriety of my seeing Stella, as her friend and brother—­especially when I don’t live in the same house with her, and when she has her mother, on one side, and Madame Villeray, on the other, to take care of her?

No! the influence that keeps me away from St. Germain is the influence of Stella herself.

“I will write to you often,” she said; “but I beg you, for my sake, not to accompany us to France.”  Her look and tone reduced me to obedience.  Stupid as I am I think (after what passed between me and her mother) I can guess what she meant.

“Am I never to see you again?” I asked.

“Do you think I am hard and ungrateful?” she answered.  “Do you doubt that I shall be glad, more than glad, to see you, when—?”