CHAPTER X

      On the afternoon of the next day, while my two good friends were still occupied by the duties of the office, I stole out to pay my promised visit to Minna and Minna's mother.

      It was impossible not to arrive at the conclusion that they were indeed in straitened circumstances. Their lodgings were in the cheap suburban quarter of Frankfort on the left bank of the river. Everything was scrupulously neat, and the poor furniture was arranged with taste—but no dexterity of management could disguise the squalid shabbiness of the sitting-room into which I was shown. I could not help thinking how distressed Fritz would feel, if he could have seen his charming Minna in a place so unworthy of her as this.

      The rickety door opened, and the "Jezebel" of the anonymous letter (followed by her daughter) entered the room.

      There are certain remarkable women in all countries who, whatever sphere they may be seen in, fill that sphere as completely as a great actor fills the stage. Widow Fontaine was one of these noteworthy persons. The wretched little room seemed to disappear when she softly glided into it; and even the pretty Minna herself receded into partial obscurity in her mother's presence. And yet there was nothing in the least obtrusive in the manner of Madame Fontaine, and nothing remarkable in her stature. Her figure, reaching to no more than the middle height, was the well-rounded figure of a woman approaching forty years of age. The influence she exercised was, in part, attributable, as I suppose, to the supple grace of all her movements; in part, to the commanding composure of her expression and the indescribable witchery of her manner. Her dark eyes, never fully opened in my remembrance, looked at me under heavy overhanging upper eyelids. Her enemies saw something sensual in their strange expression. To my mind it was rather something furtively cruel—except when she looked at her daughter. Sensuality shows itself most plainly in the excessive development of the lower part of the face. Madame Fontaine's lips were thin, and her chin was too small. Her profuse black hair was just beginning to be streaked with gray. Her complexion wanted color. In spite of these drawbacks, she was still a striking, I might almost say a startling, creature, when you first looked at her. And, though she only wore the plainest widow's weeds, I don't scruple to assert that she was the most perfectly dressed woman I ever saw.

      Minna made a modest attempt to present me in due form. Her mother put her aside playfully, and held out both her long white powerful hands to me as cordially as if we had known each other for years.

      "I wait to prove other people before I accept them for my friends," she said. "Mr. David, you have been more than kind to my daughter—and you are my friend at our first meeting."

      I believe I repeat the words exactly. I wish I could give any adequate idea of the exquisite charm of voice and manner which accompanied them.

      And yet, I was not at my ease with her—I was not drawn to her irresistibly, as I had felt drawn to her daughter. Those dark, steady, heavy-lidded eyes of hers seemed to be looking straight into my heart, and surprising all my secrets. To say that I actually distrusted and disliked her would be far from the truth. Distrust and dislike would have protected me, in some degree at least, from feeling her influence as I certainly did feel it. How that influence was exerted—whether it was through her eyes, or through her manner, or, to speak the jargon of these latter days, through some "magnetic emanation" from her, which invisibly overpowered me—is more than I can possibly say. I can only report that she contrived by slow degrees to subject the action of my will more and more completely to the action of hers, until I found myself answering her most insidious questions as unreservedly as if she had been in very truth my intimate and trusted friend.

      "And is this your first visit to Frankfort, Mr. David?" she began.

      "Oh, no, madam! I have been at Frankfort on two former occasions."

      "Ah, indeed? And have you always stayed with Mr. Keller?"

      "Always."

      She looked unaccountably interested when she heard that reply, brief as it was.

      "Then, of course, you are intimate with him," she said. "Intimate enough, perhaps, to ask a favor or to introduce a friend?"

      I made a futile attempt to answer this cautiously.

      "As intimate, madam, as a young clerk in the business can hope to be with a partner," I said.

      "A clerk in the business?" she repeated. "I thought you lived in London, with your aunt."

      Here Minna interposed for the first time.

      "You forget, mamma, that there are three names in the business. The inscription over the door in Main Street is Wagner, Keller, and Engelman. Fritz once told me that the office here in Frankfort was only the small office—and the grand business was Mr. Wagner's business in London. Am I right, Mr. David?"

      "Quite right, Miss Minna. But we have no such magnificent flower-garden at the London house as Mr. Engelman's flower-garden here. May I offer you a nosegay which he allowed me to gather?"

      I had hoped to make the flowers a means of turning the conversation to more interesting topics. But the widow resumed her questions, while Minna was admiring the flowers.

      "Then you are Mr. Wagner's clerk?" she persisted.

      "I was Mr. Wagner's clerk. Mr. Wagner is dead."

      "Ha! And who takes care of the great business now?"

      Without well knowing why, I felt a certain reluctance to speak of my aunt and her affairs. But Widow Fontaine's eyes rested on me with a resolute expectation in them which I felt myself compelled to gratify. When she understood that Mr. Wagner's widow was now the chief authority in the business, her curiosity to hear everything that I could tell her about my aunt became all but insatiable. Minna's interest in the subject was, in quite another way, as vivid as her mother's. My aunt's house was the place to which cruel Mr. Keller had banished her lover. The inquiries of the mother and daughter followed each other in such rapid succession that I cannot pretend to remember them now. The last question alone remains vividly impressed on my memory, in connection with the unexpected effect which my answer produced. It was put by the widow in these words:

      "Your aunt is interested, of course, in the affairs of her partners in this place. Is it possible, Mr. David, that she may one day take the journey to Frankfort?"

      "It is quite likely, madam, that my aunt may be in Frankfort on business before the end of the year."

      As I replied in those terms the widow looked round slowly at her daughter. Minna was evidently quite as much at a loss to understand the look as I was. Madame Fontaine turned to me again, and made an apology.

      "Pardon me, Mr. David, there is a little domestic duty that I had forgotten." She crossed the room to a small table, on which writing-materials were placed, wrote a few lines, and handed the paper, without enclosing it, to Minna. "Give that, my love, to our good friend downstairs—and, while you are in the kitchen, suppose you make the tea. You will stay and drink tea with us, Mr. David? It is our only luxury, and we always make it ourselves."

      My first impulse was to find an excuse for declining the invitation.