To-day he is angry with me. He has no
right to be angry with me." "Mademoiselle," I said, "have you ever read our Shakespeare?" "Oh, yes, in English I have read him. I can read English well enough,
though I speak but a little." "And have you read the 'Tempest'?" "How? Ariel, Ferdinand, Miranda, Caliban? Oh, yes. It is beautiful." "Well, mademoiselle," I said, "do you remember how Miranda first saw
Ferdinand?" She smiled and blushed again--she was such a little blusher. "I know
what you would say," she said. "You English are blunt. You talk to young
ladies so strangely." "Well, Mademoiselle Isaline, it seems to me that you at Les Pentes are
like Miranda on the island. You see nobody, and there is nobody here to
see you. You must not go and fall in love, like Miranda, with the very
first man you happen to meet with, because he comes from the Normal
School at Geneva. There are plenty of men in the world, believe me,
beside M. Claude." "Ah, but Miranda and Ferdinand both loved one another," said Isaline
archly; "and they were married, and both lived happily ever afterward." I saw at once she was trying to pique me. "How do you know that?" I asked. "It doesn't say so in the play. For all
I know, Ferdinand lost the crown of Naples through a revolution, and
went and settled down at a country school in Savoy or somewhere, and
took to drinking, and became brutally unsociable, and made Miranda's
life a toil and a burden to her. At any rate, I'm sure of one thing; he
wasn't worthy of her." What made me go on in this stupid way? I'm sure I don't know. I
certainly didn't mean to marry Isaline myself: ... at least, not
definitely: and yet when you are sitting down at tea on a rustic garden
seat, with a pretty girl in a charming white crimped cap beside you, and
you get a chance of insinuating that other fellows don't think quite as
much of her as you do, it isn't human nature to let slip the opportunity
of insinuating it. "But you don't know M. Claude," said Isaline practically, "and so you
can't tell whether _he_ is worthy of _me_ or not." "I'm perfectly certain," I answered, "that he can't be, even though he
were a very paragon of virtue, learning, and manly beauty." "If monsieur talks in that way," said Isaline, "I shall have to go back
at once to mamma." "Wait a moment," I said, "and I will talk however you wish me. You know,
you agree to give me instruction in conversational French. That
naturally includes lessons in conversation with ladies of exceptional
personal attractions. I must practise for every possible circumstance of
life.... So you have read Shakespeare, then. And any other English
books?" "Oh, many. Scott, and Dickens, and all, except Byron. My papa says a
young lady must not read Byron. But I have read what he has said of our
lake, in a book of extracts. It is a great pleasure to me to look down
among the vines and chestnuts, there, and to think that our lake, which
gleams so blue and beautiful below, is the most famous in poetry of all
lakes. You know, Jean Jacques says, 'Mon lac est le premier,' and so it
is." "Then you have read Jean Jacques too?" "Oh, mon Dieu, no. My papa says a young lady must especially not read
Jean Jacques. But I know something about him--so much as is
_convenable_. Hold here! do you see that clump of trees down there by
the lake, just above Clarens? That is Julie's grove--'le bosquet de
Julie' we call it. There isn't a spot along the lake that is not thus
famous, that has not its memories and its associations. It is for that
that I could not choose ever to leave the dear old Pays de Vaud." "You would not like to live in England, then?" I asked. (What a fool I
was, to be sure.) "Oh, ma foi, no. That would make one too much shiver, with your chills,
and your fogs, and your winters. I could not stand it. It is cold here,
but at any rate it is sunny.... Well, at least, it would not be
pleasant.... But, after all, that depends.... You have the sun, too,
sometimes, don't you?" "Isaline!" cried madame from the window. "I want you to come and help me
pick over the gooseberries!" And, to say the truth, I thought it quite
time she should go. II. A week later, I met M. Claude again. He was a very nice young fellow,
there was not a doubt of that. He was intelligent, well educated, manly,
with all the honest, sturdy, independent Swiss nature clearly visible in
his frank, bright, open face. I have seldom met a man whom I liked
better at first sight than M. Claude, and after he had gone away I felt
more than a little ashamed of myself to think I had been half trying to
steal away Isaline's heart from this good fellow, without really having
any deliberate design upon it myself. It began to strike me that I had
been doing a very dirty, shabby thing. "Charlie, my boy," I said to myself, as I sat fishing with bottom bait
and dangling my legs over the edge of a pool, "you've been flirting with
this pretty little Swiss girl; and what's worse, you've been flirting in
a very bad sort of way. She's got a lover of her own; and you've been
trying to make her feel dissatisfied with him, for no earthly reason. You've taken advantage of your position and your fancied London airs and
graces to run down by implication a good fellow who really loves her and
would probably make her an excellent husband. Don't let this occur
again, sir." And having thus virtuously resolved, of course I went away
and flirted with Isaline next morning as vigorously as ever. During the following fortnight, M. Claude came often, and I could not
disguise from myself the fact that M. Claude did not quite like me. This
was odd, for I liked him very much. I suppose he took me for a potential
rival: men are so jealous when they are in love. Besides, I observed
that Isaline tried not to be thrown too much with him alone; tried to
include me in the party wherever she went with him. Also, I will freely
confess that I felt myself every day more fond of Isaline's society, and
I half fancied I caught myself trepidating a little inwardly now and
then when she happened to come up to me. Absurd to be so susceptible;
but such is man. One lovely day about this time I set out once more to try my hand (or
rather my feet) alone upon the Aiguille. Isaline put me up a nice little
light lunch in my knapsack, and insisted upon seeing that my alpenstock
was firmly shod, and my pedestrian boots in due climbing order. In fact,
she loudly lamented my perversity in attempting to make the ascent
without a guide; and she must even needs walk with me as far as the
little bridge over the torrent beside the snow line, to point me out the
road the guides generally took to the platform at the summit. For
myself, I was a practised mountaineer, and felt no fear for the result. As I left her for the ice, she stood a long time looking and waving me
the right road with her little pocket-handkerchief; while as long as I
could hear her voice she kept on exhorting me to be very careful. "Ah,
if monsieur would only have taken a guide!