The new comers had not appeared at meals for more than two days before the young gentleman began to pay his court to the young lady.  From the first moment it was a plain case.  Very soon every one in the pension was highly amused to notice how fluent his French was becoming; his choice of words at times was even elegant!  The girl taught him it without a trace of grammar, by charm, sprightliness, a little nonsense; a pair of confiding eyes and a youthful voice were sufficient.  It was from her that he got, by stealth, one novel after another.  By stealth it had to be; by stealth Lucie had procured them; by stealth she gave them to him; by stealth they were read; by stealth she took them back again.  This reading made him a little absent-minded, but otherwise nothing betrayed his flights into literature:  to be sure, they were not very wonderful.

Fru Kaas noticed her son’s flirtation, and smiled with the rest over his progress in French.  She had less objection to this friendship, in which, to a great extent, she shared, than to those in England, from which she had been quite excluded.  In the evenings she would take the mother and daughter out for short excursions; and these she greatly enjoyed.  But the novel reading which the young people carried on secretly had resulted in conversations of a “grown up” type.  They talked of love with the deep experience which is proper to their age, they talked with still greater discretion as to when their wedding should take place; on this point they indirectly said much which caused them many a delightful tremor.  As they were accustomed to talk about themselves before others, to describe their feelings in a veiled form, it often happened when there were many people near that they carried this amusement further, and before they were themselves aware of it, they were in the full tide of a symbolic language and played “catch” with each other.

Fru Kaas noticed one evening that the word “rose” was drawn out to a greater length than it was possible for any rose to attain to; at the same time she saw the languishing look in their eyes, and broke in with the question, “What do you mean about the rose, child?”

If any one had peeped behind a rose-bush and caught them kissing one another, a thing they had never done, they could not have blushed more.

The next day Fru Kaas found new rooms, a long way from the quay near which they were living.

Rafael had suffered greatly at being torn away from England just as he had come down from his high horse and had put himself on a par with his companions, but not the least notice was taken of his trouble; it had only annoyed his mother.