Miss Grey's handsome and only too expressive features showed signs of profound dissatisfaction.
"I couldn't help telling him that we were going to live in London--one's brother, you know."
"Yes, one's brother," Miss Grey said with sarcastic emphasis. "They are an affectionate race, these brothers! Then he knows all about our expedition? Has he been here, Mary?"
"Oh, no, dear; but he wrote to me--such beautiful letters! Perhaps you would like to read them?"
Miss Grey was silent, and was evidently fighting some battle with herself. At last she said:
"Well, Mary dear, it can't be helped, and I dare say he won't trouble to come very often to see _us_. But I hope he will come as often as you like, for you might be terribly lonely. I don't care to know anybody. I mean to study human nature, not to know people."
"But you have some friends in London, and you are going to see them."
"Oh--Lucy Money; yes. She was at school with us, and we used to be fond of each other. I think of calling to see her, but she may be changed ever so much, and perhaps we shan't get on together at all. Her father has become a sort of great man in London, I believe--I don't know how. They won't trouble us much, I dare say."
The friends then sat and talked for a short time about their project. It is curious to observe that though they were such devoted friends they looked on their joint purpose with very different eyes. The young woman, with her beauty, her spirit, and her talents, was absolutely sincere and single-minded, and was going to London with the sole purpose of living a free, secluded life, without ambition, without thought of any manner of success. The poor little old maid had her head already filled with wild dreams of fame to be found in London, of a distinguished brother, a bright career, publishers seeking for everything she wrote, and her name often in the papers. Devoted as she was to Miss Grey, or perhaps because she was so devoted to her, she had already been forming vague but delightful hopes about the reformed brother which she would not now for all the world have ventured to hint to her friend.
Late that same night a young man stepped from a window in one of the rooms on the third floor in the Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, and stood in the balcony. It was a balcony in that side of the hotel which looks on the Rue de Rivoli. The young man smoked a cigar and leaned over the balcony.