“Madame,” said the Vicomte to Gwendolen, “your Silverdale is enchanting.  We have been to that little summer-house which commands the valley.”

“And are you still learning things about our country, Vicomte?” she asked, with a glance at Honora.

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH HONORA WIDENS HER HORIZON

If it were not a digression, it might be interesting to speculate upon the reason why, in view of their expressed opinions of Silverdale, both the Vicomte and Mr. Spence remained during the week that followed.  Robert, who went off in the middle of it with his family to the seashore, described it to Honora as a normal week.  During its progress there came and went a missionary from China, a pianist, an English lady who had heard of the Institution, a Southern spinster with literary gifts, a youthful architect who had not built anything, and a young lawyer interested in settlement work.

The missionary presented our heroine with a book he had written about the Yang-tse-kiang; the Southern lady suspected her of literary gifts; the architect walked with her through the woods to the rustic shelter where the Vicomte had kissed her hand, and told her that he now comprehended the feelings of Christopher Wren when he conceived St. Paul’s Cathedral, of Michael Angelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel.  Even the serious young lawyer succumbed, though not without a struggle.  When he had first seen Miss Leffingwell, he confessed, he had thought her frivolous.  He had done her an injustice, and wished to acknowledge it before he left.  And, since she was interested in settlement work, he hoped, if she were going through New York, that she would let him know.  It would be a real pleasure to show her what he was doing.

Best of all, Honora, by her unselfishness, endeared herself to her hostess.

“I can’t tell you what a real help you are to me, my dear,” said that lady.  “You have a remarkable gift with people for so young a girl, and I do you the credit of thinking that it all springs from a kind heart.”

In the meantime, unknown to Mrs. Holt, who might in all conscience have had a knowledge of what may be called social chemistry, a drama was slowly unfolding itself.  By no fault of Honora’s, of course.  There may have been some truth in the quotation of the Vicomte as applied to her —­that she was destined to be loved only amidst the play of drama.  If experience is worth anything, Monsieur de Toqueville should have been an expert in matters of the sex.  Could it be possible, Honora asked herself more than once, that his feelings were deeper than her feminine instinct and, the knowledge she had gleaned from novels led her to suspect?

It is painful to relate that the irregularity and deceit of the life the Vicomte was leading amused her, for existence at Silverdale was plainly not of a kind to make a gentleman of the Vicomte’s temperament and habits ecstatically happy.  And Honora was filled with a strange and unaccountable delight when she overheard him assuring Mrs. Wellfleet, the English lady of eleemosynary tendencies, that he was engaged in a study at first hand of Americans.