a shade—or say a light—rounder than the
average English face, and her figure slightly
rounder than the figure of the average English
girl at nineteen. A remarkable indication of
freedom and grace of limb, in her quiet
attitude, and a wonderful purity and freshness of
colour in her dimpled face and bright grey eyes,
seemed fraught with mountain air. Switzerland
too, though the general fashion of her dress
was English, peeped out of the fanciful bodice
she wore, and lurked in the curious clocked red
stocking, and in its little silver-buckled shoe. As
to the elder lady, sitting with her feet apart upon
the lower brass ledge of the stove, supporting
a lap-full of gloves while she cleaned one
stretched on her left hand, she was a true
Swiss impersonation of another kind; from the
breadth of her cushion-like back, and the
ponderosity of her respectable legs (if the word be
admissible), to the black velvet band tied tightly
round her throat for the repression of a rising
tendency to goitre; or, higher still, to her great
copper-coloured gold ear-rings; or, higher still,
to her head-dress of black gauze stretched on
wire.

"Miss Marguerite," said Obenreizer to the
young lady, "do you recollect this gentleman?"

"I think," she answered, rising from her
seat, surprised and a little confused: "it is Mr.
Vendale?"

"I think it is," said Obenreizer, dryly.
"Permit me, Mr. Vendale. Madame Dor."

The elder lady by the stove, with the glove
stretched on her left hand, like a glover's sign,
half got up, half looked over her broad shoulder,
and wholly plumped down again and rubbed
away.

"Madame Dor," said Obenreizer, smiling, "is
so kind as to keep me free from stain or tear.
Madame Dor humours my weakness for being
always neat, and devotes her time to removing
every one of my specks and spots."

Madame Dor, with the stretched glove in the
air, and her eyes closely scrutinising its palm,
discovered a tough spot in Mr. Obenreizer at
that instant, and rubbed hard at him. George
Vendale took his seat by the embroidery-frame
(having first taken the fair right hand that his
entrance had checked), and glanced at the
gold cross that dipped into the bodice, with
something of the devotion of a pilgrim who had
reached his shrine at last. Obenreizer stood
in the middle of the room with his thumbs in his
waistcoat-pockets, and became filmy.

"He was saying down-stairs, Miss
Obenreizer," observed Vendale, "that the world is so
small a place, that people cannot escape one
another. I have found it much too large for
me since I saw you last."

"Have you travelled so far, then?" she
inquired.

"Not so far, for I have only gone back to
Switzerland each year; but I could have wished—
and indeed I have wished very often—that
the little world did not afford such opportunities
for long escapes as it does. If it had been less,
I might have found my fellow-travellers sooner,
you know."

The pretty Marguerite coloured, and very
slightly glanced in the direction of Madame Dor.

"You find us at length, Mr. Vendale.
Perhaps you may lose us again."

"I trust not. The curious coincidence that
has enabled me to find you, encourages me to
hope not."

"What is that coincidence, sir, if you please?"
A dainty little native touch in this turn of speech,
and in its tone, made it perfectly captivating,
thought George Vendale, when again he noticed
an instantaneous glance towards Madame Dor.
A caution seemed to be conveyed in it, rapid
flash though it was; so he quietly took heed of
Madame Dor from that time forth.

"It is that I happen to have become a partner
in a House of business in London, to which
Mr. Obenreizer happens this very day to be
expressly recommended: and that, too, by
another house of business in Switzerland, in which
(as it turns out) we both have a commercial
interest. He has not told you?"

"Ah!" cried Obenreizer, striking in,
filmless. "No. I had not told Miss Marguerite.
The world is so small and so monotonous that
a surprise is worth having in such a little jog-trot
place. It is as he tells you, Miss Marguerite.
He, of so fine a family, and so proudly
bred, has condescended to trade. To trade!
Like us poor peasants who have risen from
ditches!"

A cloud crept over the fair brow, and she
cast down her eyes.

"Why, it is good for trade!" pursued
Obenreizer, enthusiastically. "It ennobles trade!
It is the misfortune of trade, it is its vulgarity,
that any low people—for example, we poor
peasants—may take to it and climb by it. See
you, my dear Vendale!" He spoke with great
energy. "The father of Miss Marguerite, my
eldest half-brother, more than two times your
age or mine, if living now, wandered without
shoes, almost without rags, from that wretched
Pass—wandered—wandered—got to be fed with
the mules and dogs at an Inn in the main valley
far away—got to be Boy there—got to be Ostler
—got to be Waiter—got to be Cook—got to be
Landlord. As Landlord, he took me (could he
take the idiot beggar his brother, or the spinning
monstrosity his sister?) to put as pupil to
the famous watchmaker, his neighbour and
friend. His wife dies when Miss Marguerite
is born. What is his will, and what are his
words, to me, when he dies, she being between
girl and woman? 'All for Marguerite, except
so much by the year for you. You are young,
but I make her your ward, for you were of the
obscurest and the poorest peasantry, and so was
I, and so was her mother; we were abject
peasants all, and you will remember it.' The thing
is equally true of most of my countrymen, now
in trade in this your London quarter of Soho.
Peasants once; low-born drudging Swiss
Peasants. Then how good and great for trade:"
here, from having been warm, he became
playfully jubilant, and touched the young wine-
merchant's elbows again with his light embrace:
"to be exalted by gentlemen!"