She was interesting; I could imagine she had lost parents, natural
protectors--could conceive even she had inherited money. I was at
a pass of my own fortunes when keeping hansoms at doors seemed to
me pure swagger. As a trick of this bold and sensitive girl,
however, it became romantic--a part of the general romance of her
freedom, her errand, her innocence. The confidence of young
Americans was notorious, and I speedily arrived at a conviction
that no impulse could have been more generous than the impulse that
had operated here. I foresaw at that moment that it would make her
my peculiar charge, just as circumstances had made Neil Paraday.
She would be another person to look after, so that one's honour
would be concerned in guiding her straight. These things became
clearer to me later on; at the instant I had scepticism enough to
observe to her, as I turned the pages of her volume, that her net
had all the same caught many a big fish. She appeared to have had
fruitful access to the great ones of the earth; there were people
moreover whose signatures she had presumably secured without a
personal interview. She couldn't have worried George Washington
and Friedrich Schiller and Hannah More. She met this argument, to
my surprise, by throwing up the album without a pang. It wasn't
even her own; she was responsible for none of its treasures. It
belonged to a girl-friend in America, a young lady in a western
city. This young lady had insisted on her bringing it, to pick up
more autographs: she thought they might like to see, in Europe, in
what company they would be. The "girl-friend," the western city,
the immortal names, the curious errand, the idyllic faith, all made
a story as strange to me, and as beguiling, as some tale in the
Arabian Nights. Thus it was that my informant had encumbered
herself with the ponderous tome; but she hastened to assure me that
this was the first time she had brought it out. For her visit to