And commenced thus:—
“TO ONE WHO HAS GONE.
“What! with out one word of farewell,
Without a turn of the head...”
Two hundred lines followed these. That there might be no mistake, the name of Charlotte occurred several times. Jack flung down the magazine with a shrug of the shoulders. “And he dared to send you this?”
“Yes; two or three days ago.”
Ida was dying to pick up the book from the floor, but dared not. After a while she stooped, carelessly.
“You do not intend to keep those verses, do you? They are simply absurd.”
“But I do not think them so.”
“He simply beats his wings and crows, mother dear; his words touch no human heart.”
“Be more just, Jack,”—her voice trembled,—“heaven knows that I know M. D’Argenton better than any one, his faults and the defects of his nature, because I have suffered from them. The man I give up to you; as to the poet, it is a different thing. In the opinion of every one, the peculiarity of M. D’Argenton’s genius is the sympathetic quality of his verses. Musset had its irksome degree; and I think that the beginning of this poem, ‘The Parting,’ is very touching: the young woman who goes away in the morning fog in her ball-dress without one word of farewell.”
Jack could not restrain himself. “But the woman is yourself,” he cried, “and you know under what circumstances you left.”