"I hope not, M. Obenreizer."

"Please call me, in your country, Mr. I
call myself so, for I love your country. If I
could be English! But I am born. And you?
Though descended from so fine a family, you
have had the condescension to come into trade?
Stop though. Wines? Is it trade in England
or profession? Not fine art?"

"Mr. Obenreizer," returned Vendale, somewhat
out of countenance, "I was but a silly
young fellow, just of age, when I first had the
pleasure of travelling with you, and when you
and I and Mademoiselle your niece—who is
well?"

"Thank you. Who is well."

"—Shared some slight glacier dangers
together. If, with a boy's vanity, I rather vaunted
my family, I hope I did so as a kind of
introduction of myself. It was very weak, and in
very bad taste; but perhaps you know our
English proverb, 'Live and learn.'"

"You make too much of it," returned the
Swiss. "And what the devil! After all, yours
was a fine family."

George Vendale's laugh betrayed a little
vexation as he rejoined: " Well! I was strongly
attached to my parents, and when we first
travelled together, Mr. Obenreizer, I was in
the first flush of coming into what my father
and mother left me. So I hope it may have
been, after all, more youthful openness of speech
and heart than boastfulness."

"All openness of speech and heart! No
boastfuluess!" cried Obenreizer. "You tax
yourself too heavily. You tax yourself, my
faith! as if you was your Government taxing
you! Besides, it commenced with me. I
remember, that evening in the boat upon the
lake, floating among the reflections of the
mountains and valleys, the crags and pine
woods, which were my earliest remembrance,
I drew a word-picture of my sordid childhood.
Of our poor hut, by the waterfall which my
mother showed to travellers; of the cow-shed
where I slept with the cow; of my idiot half-
brother always sitting at the door, or limping
down the Pass to beg; of my half-sister always
spinning, and resting her enormous goitre on a
great stone; of my being a famished naked
little wretch of two or three years, when they
were men and women with hard hands to beat
me, I, the only child of my father's second
marriage—if it even was a marriage. What more
natural than for you to compare notes with me,
and say, 'We are as one by age; at that same
time I sat upon my mother's lap in my father's
carriage, rolling through the rich English
streets, all luxury surrounding me, all squalid
poverty kept far from me. Such is my earliest
remembrance as opposed to yours!'"

Mr. Obenreizer was a black-haired young man
of a dark complexion, through whose swarthy
skin no red glow ever shone. When colour
would have come into another cheek, a hardly
discernible beat would come into his, as if the
machinery for bringing up the ardent blood
were there, but the machinery were dry. He
was robustly made, well proportioned, and had
handsome features. Many would have perceived
that some surface change in him would have
set them more at their ease with him, without
being able to define what change. If his lips
could have been made much thicker, and his
neck much thinner, they would have found
their want supplied.

But the great Obenreizer peculiarity was,
that a certain nameless film would come over
his eyes—apparently by the action of his own
will—which would impenetrably veil, not only
from those tellers of tales, but from his face at
large, every expression save one of attention. It
by no means followed that his attention should be
wholly given to the person with whom he spoke,
or even wholly bestowed on present sounds and
objects. Rather, it was a comprehensive
watchfulness of everything he had in his own mind,
and everything that he knew to be, or
suspected to be, in the minds of other men.

At this stage of the conversation, Mr.
Obenreizer's film came over him.

"The object of my present visit," said
Vendale, "is, I need hardly say, to assure you of the
friendliness of Wilding and Co., and of the
goodness of your credit with us, and of our
desire to be of service to you. We hope shortly
to offer you our hospitality. Things are not
quite in train with us yet, for my partner, Mr.
Wilding, is reorganising the domestic part of
our establishment, and is interrupted by some
private affairs. You don't know Mr. Wilding,
I believe?"

Mr. Obenreizer did not.

"You must come together soon. He will be
glad to have made your acquaintance, and I
think I may predict that you will be glad to
have made his. You have not been long
established in London, I suppose, Mr.
Obenreizer?"

"It is only now that I have undertaken this
agency."

"Mademoiselle your niece—is—not
married?"

"Not married."

George Vendale glanced about him, as if for
any tokens of her.

"She has been in London?"

"She is in London."

"When, and where, might I have the honour
of recalling myself to her remembrance?"

Mr. Obenreizer, discarding his film and
touching his visitor's elbows as before, said
lightly: "Come up-stairs."

Fluttered enough by the suddenness with
which the interview he had sought was coming
upon him after all, George Vendale followed
upstairs. In a room over the chamber he had
just quitted—a room also Swiss-appointed—a
young lady sat near one of three windows,
working at an embroidery-frame; and an older
lady sat with her face turned close to another
white-tiled stove (though it was summer, and
the stove was not lighted), cleaning gloves.
The young lady wore an unusual quantity of
fair bright hair, very prettily braided about a
rather rounder white forehead than the average
English type, and so her face might have been