Coming Home

III

The day before we started for Réchamp his spirits flew up again, and that night he became confidential. "You've been such a friend to me that there are certain things--seeing what's ahead of us--that I should like to explain"; and, noticing my surprise, he went on: "I mean about my people. The state of mind in my milieu must be so remote from anything you're used to in your happy country.... But perhaps I can make you understand...."

I saw that what he wanted was to talk to me of the girl he was engaged to. Mlle. Malo, left an orphan at ten, had been the ward of a neighbour of the Réchamps', a chap with an old name and a starred château, who had lost almost everything else at baccarat before he was forty, and had repented, had the gout and studied agriculture for the rest of his life. The gir