with myself, and after a little, on the seat next to her becoming vacant, I went and stood before her. She looked up at me a moment, staring, as if she could not imagine who I was or what I wanted; then, smiling and extending her hands, she broke out, Ah, my dear old friendwhat a delight! If she had waited to see what I would do, in order to choose her own line, she at least carried out this line with the utmost grace. She was cordial, friendly, artless, interested, and indeed I am sure she was very glad to see me. I may as well say immediately, however, that she gave neither then nor later any sign of a disposition to borrow money. She had none too muchthat I learnedbut for the moment she seemed able to pay her way. I took the empty chair and we remained talking for an hour. After a while she made me sit on the other side of her, next to her daughter, whom she wished to know meto love meas one of their oldest friends. It goes back, back, back, doesn't it? said Mrs. Pallant; and of course she remembers you as a child. Linda smiled very sweetly and indefinitely, and I saw she remembered me not at all. When her mother intimated that they had often talked about me she failed to take it up, though she looked extremely nice. Looking nice was her strong point; she was prettier even than her mother had been. She was such a little lady that she made me ashamed of having doubted, however vaguely and for a moment, of her position in the scale of propriety. Her appearance seemed to say that if she had no acquaintances, it was because she did not want tobecause there was nobody there who struck her as attractive: there was not the slightest difficulty about her choosing her friends. Linda Pallant, young as she was, and fresh and fair and charming and gentle and sufficiently shy, looked somehow exclusiveas if the dust of the common world had never been meant to settle upon her. She was simpler than her mother and was evidently not a young woman of professionsexcept in so far as she was committed to an interest in you by her bright, pure, intelligent smile. A girl who had such a lovely way of showing her teeth could never pass for heartless.
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As I sat between the pair I felt that I had been taken possession of and that for better or worse my stay at Homburg would be intimately associated with theirs. We gave each other
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