20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

Recovering himself, he expressed his gratitude modestly and becomingly. Mrs. Fairbank’s ready sympathies overflowed, as usual, at her lips. She talked to him about our home in France, as if the worn, gray-headed hostler had been a child. �Such a dear old house, Francis; and such pretty gardens! Stables! Stables ten times as big as your stables here – quite a choice of rooms for you. You must learn the name of our house – Maison Rouge. Our nearest town is Metz[48 - Metz – a city in northeastern France; it was founded by a Gallic tribe and later fortified by the Romans].

We are within a walk of the beautiful River Moselle[49 - the River Moselle – a river in northeastern France and western Germany, a tributary of the Rhine River]. And when we want a change we have only to take the railway to the frontier, and find ourselves in Germany.’

Listening, so far, with a very bewildered face, Francis started and changed color when my wife reached the end of her last sentence.

�Germany?’ he repeated.

�Yes. Does Germany remind you of anything?’

The hostler’s eyes looked down sadly on the ground. �Germany reminds me of my wife,’ he replied.

�Indeed! How?’

�She once told me she had lived in Germany – long before I knew her – in the time when she was a young girl.’

�Was she living with relations or friends?’

�She was living as governess in a foreign family.’

�In what part of Germany?’

�I don’t remember, ma’am.

I doubt if she told me.’

�Did she tell you the name of the family?’

�Yes, ma’am. It was a foreign name, and it has slipped my memory long since. The head of the family was a wine grower in a large way of business – I remember that.’

�Did you hear what sort of wine he grew? There are wine growers in our neighborhood. Was it Moselle wine[50 - Moselle wine – famous wine produced in Germany from the vineyards on the banks of the Moselle River]?’

�I couldn’t say, ma’am, I doubt if I ever heard.

’

There the conversation dropped. We engaged to communicate with Francis Raven before we left England, and took our leave. I had made arrangements to pay our round of visits to English friends, and to return to Maison Rouge in the summer. On the eve of departure, certain difficulties in connection with the management of some landed property of mine in Ireland obliged us to alter our plans.