The dowager was pleased when the subject was dropped. She had seen so many battles fought, in theory, by humanitarians who are alive to the injustice of the world. But her day was over for race questions and creeds. Judithe was inspiring in her sympathies, but the questions that breathe living flame for us at twenty years, have burned into dead ashes at eighty.

"Tah! I would rather she would marry and let me see her children," she grumbled to Madame Blanc; "if she does not, I trust her to your care when I am gone. She is different since we reached Paris—different, gayer, and less of the student."

"But no more in touch with society," remarked the attentive companion; "she accepts no invitations, and goes only to the galleries and theatres."

"Um!—pictured people, and artificial people! Both have a tendency to make her an idealist instead of a realist."

To Dumaresque she made the same remark, and suggested he should help find attractions for her in real life.

"She is too imaginative, and I do not want her to be of the romantic women; the craze for romance in life is what fills the columns of the journals with new scandals each month."

"Madame Judithe is safe from that sort of romance," declared her god-son. "Yet with her face and those glorious eyes one should allow her some flights in the land of the ideal. She suggests all old Italy at times, but she has never mentioned her family to me."

"Because it was a topic which both Alain and I forbade her, when she was younger, to discuss. Naturally, she has not a joyous temperament and memories of her childhood can only have an unhappy effect, which accounts for our decision of the matter. Her father died before she could remember him, and the mother, who was of Greek blood, not long after. A relative who arranged affairs left the daughter penniless. At the little chateau Levigne she was of great service to me when she was but sixteen. Madam Blanc, who tried to reach me in time, declares the child saved my life. It was a dog—a mad one. I was on the lawn when he broke through the hedge, snapped Alain's mastiff, Ponto, and came straight for me. I was paralyzed with terror; then, just as he leaped at me, the child swung a heavy chair over her head. Tah! She looked like a young tigress. The dog was struck helpless, his back broken. The gardener came and killed him, and Ponto, too, was killed, when he showed that the bite had given him the poison. Ah, it was terrible, that day. Then I wrote Alain and we decided she should never leave us. I made over to her the income of the little Lavigne estate, thus her education was carried on, and when we went to Rome—well, Alain was not satisfied until he could do even more for her."

The old lady helped herself to snuff and sighed. Her listener wondered if, after all, that death-bed marriage had been entirely acceptable to the mother. Some suggestion of his thought must have come to her, for she continued:

"Not that I disapproved, you must understand. No daughter could be more devoted. I could not be without her now. But I had a hope—a mother's foolish hope—that perhaps it might be a love affair; that the marriage would renew his interest in life and thus accomplish what the physicians could not do—save him."

"Good old Alain," said Dumaresque, with real feeling in his tones. "He deserved to live and win her. I can imagine no better fortune for a man."

"But it was an empty hope, and a sad wedding," continued the dowager, with a sigh. "That was, to her, a day of gloom, which to others is the one day to look forward to through girlhood and backward to from old age. Oh, yes; it is not so much to be wondered at that she is a creature of moods and ideals outlined on a background of shadow."

The voice of the Marquise sounded through the hall and up the stairs. She was singing, joying as a bird. The eyes of the two met, and Dumaresque laughed.

"Oh! and what is that but a mood, too?" demanded the dowager; "a mood that is pleasant, I grant you, and it has lasted longer than usual—ever since we came to Paris. I enjoy it, but I like to know the reason of things. I guess at it in this case; yet it eludes me."

Dumaresque raised his brows and smiled as one who invites further confidences. But he received instead a keen glance from the old eyes, and a question:

"Loris, who is the man?"

"What! You ask me?"

"There is no other to ask; you know all the men she has met; you are not a fool, and an artist's eye is trained to observe."

"It has not served me in this case, my god-mother."

"Which means you will not tell. I shall suspect it is yourself if you conspire to keep it from me."

"Pouf! When it is myself I shall be so eager to let it be known that no one will have time to ask a question."

"That is good," she said approvingly. "I must rest now. I have talked so long; but a word, Loris; she likes you, she trusts you, and that—well, that goes far."

And all the morning her assurance made for him hours of brightness. The stranger of Fontainbleau had drifted into the background, and should never have real place in their lives. She liked and trusted him; and that would go far.

He was happy in imagining the happiness that might be, forgetful of another lover, one among the poets, who avowed that the happiness of the future was the only real happiness of the world.

He was pleased that his god-mother had confided to him these little facts of family history. He remembered how intensely eager the dowager had been for Alain's marriage, years before, that there might be an heir; and he remembered, in part, the cause—her detestation of a female relative whose son would inherit the Marquisate should a son be born to her, and Alain die without children. He could see how eagerly the dowager would have consented to a marriage with even the poorest of poor relations if both the Marquisate and Alain might be saved by it.

Poor Alain! He remembered the story of why he had remained single; a story of love forbidden, and of a woman who entered a convent because, in the world, she could not live with her lover, and would not live with the man whose name she bore. It was an old story; she had died long ago, but Alain had remained faithful. It had been the one great passion he had known of, outside of a romance, and the finale of it was that the slight girlish protegee was mistress of his name and fortune, though her heart had never beat the faster for his glance.

And the Greek blood doubtless accounted for her readiness of speech in different tongues; they were so naturally linguists—the Greeks. He had met her first in Rome, and fancied her an Italian. Delaven had asked if she were not English; and now in the heart of France she appeared to him entirely Parisian.

A chameleon-like wife might have her disadvantages, he thought, as he walked away after the talk with his god-mother; yet she would not be so apt as others to bore one with sameness. At nineteen she was charming; at twenty-five she would be magnificent.

The streets were alive that morning with patriotic groups discussing the victory of the French troops at Magenta. The first telegrams were posted and crowds were gathered about them.

Dumaresque passed through them with an unusually preoccupied air. Then a tall man, leaning against a pillar and viewing the crowd, bowed to him in such a way as to arrest his attention. It was the American, of the smiling, half sleepy eyes, and the firm mouth. The combination appealed to Dumaresque as an artist; also the shape of the head, it was exceedingly good, strong; even his lounging attitude had the grace suggestive of strength. He remembered seeing somewhere the head of a young lion painted with just those half closed, shadowy eyes. Lieutenant McVeigh was regarding him with something akin to their watchfulness, the same slow gaze travelling from the feet to the head as they approached each other; it was deliberate as the measuring of an adversary, and its finale was a smile.

"Glad to see a man," he remarked. "I have been listening to the jabbering and screeches of the crowd until they seem only manikins."

Dumaresque laughed. "You come by way of England, I believe; do you prefer the various dialects of that land of fog?"

"No, I do not; have a cigar?" Dumaresque accepted the offer. McVeigh himself lighted one and continued:

"Their stuffiness lacks the picturesque qualities possessed by even the poorest of France, and then they bore one with their wranglings for six-pences, from Parliament down to peasant. They are always at it in Brittania the gem of the ocean, wrangling over six-pences, and half-pennies and candle ends."

"You are finding flaws in the people who call you cousin," remarked the artist.

"Yes, I know they do," said the other, between puffs. "But I can't imagine a real American helping them in their claims for relationship. Our history gives us no cause for such kindly remembrances."

"Unless on the principle that one has a kindly regard for a man after fighting with him and not coming out second best," remarked Dumaresque. "I have an errand in the next street; will you come?"

McVeigh assented. They stalked along, chattering and enjoying their cigars until they reached a florists, where Dumaresque produced a memorandum and read off a list of blossoms and greenery to be delivered by a certain date.

"An affair for the hospitals to be held in the home of Madame Dulac, wife of General Dulac," he explained; "it is to be all very novel, a bazaar and a ball. Madame is an old friend of my god-mother, the dowager Marquise de Caron, whom you have met."

McVeigh assented and showed interest.

"We have almost persuaded Madame Alain, her daughter, to preside over one of the booths. Ah! It will be a place to empty one's pockets; you must come."

"Not sure about invitations," confessed McVeigh, frankly. "It is a very exclusive affair, I believe, and a foreigner will be such a distinctive outsider at such gatherings."

"We will undertake to prevent that," promised Dumaresque, "and in the interests of charity you will find both dames and demoiselles wonderfully gracious to even a lonely, unattached man. If you dance you can win your own place."

"Oh, yes; we all dance in our country; some of us poorly, perhaps; still, we dance."

"Good! You must come. I am assisting, after a fashion, in planning the decorations, and I promise to find you some one who is charming, and who speaks your language delightfully."

There was some further chat. McVeigh promised he would attend unless his mother had made conflicting engagements. Dumaresque informed him it was to be a fancy dress affair; uniforms would be just the thing; and he parted with the American much more pleased with him than in the salons where they had met heretofore.

Kenneth McVeigh sauntered along the avenue, tall, careless, reposeful. His expression was one of content, and he smiled as he silently blessed Loris Dumaresque, who had done him excellent service without knowing it—had found a method by which he would try the charm of the third attempt to see the handsome girl who had passed them that day in the carriage.

He entered the hotel late that night. Paris, in an unofficial way, was celebrating the victory of Magenta by shouting around bon-fires, laughing under banners, forming delegations no one remembered, and making addresses no one listened to.

Late though it was, Mrs. McVeigh had not retired. From a window she was looking out on the city, where sleep seemed forgotten, and her beautiful eyes had a seriousness contrasting strangely with the joyous celebrations of victory she had been witnessing.

"What is it, mother?" he asked, in the soft, mellow tones of the South, irresistible in their caressing qualities. The mother put out her hand and clasped his without speaking.

"Homesick?" he ventured, trying to see her face as he drew a chair closer; "longing for that twelve-year-old baby of yours? Evilena certainly would enjoy the hubbub."

"No, Kenneth," she said at last: "it is not that. But I have been watching the enthusiasm of these people over a victory they have helped win for Italy's freedom—not their own. We have questions just as vital in our country; some day they must be settled in the same way; there seems no doubt of it—and then—"

"Then we will go out, have our little pass at each other, and come back and go on hoeing our corn, just as father did in the Mexican campaign," he said with an attempt at lightness; but she shook her head.

"Many a soldier left the corn fields who never came back to them."

"Why, mother, what is it, dear? You've been crying, crying here all alone over one war that is nothing to us, and another that may never happen; come! come!" He put his arm about her as if she were a child to be petted. Her head sank on his shoulder, though she still looked away from him, out into the brilliantly lighted street.

"It was not the—the political justice or injustice of the wars," she confessed after a little; "it was not of that I was thinking. But a woman screamed out there on the street. They—the people—had just told her the returns of the battle, and her son was among the killed—poor woman! Her only son, Kenneth, and—"

"Yes, dear, I understand." He drew her closer and lifting her head from her lap, placed it on his shoulder. She uttered a tremulous little sigh of content. And then, with his arms about her, the mother and son looked out on Paris after a victory, each thinking of their own home, their own capital cities, and their own vague dread of battles to be in the future.



CHAPTER VII.

As morning after morning passed without the arrival of other mysterious boxes of flowers or of significant messages, the Marquise began to watch Loris Dumaresque more than was usual with her. He was the only one who knew; had he, educated by some spirit of jest, been the sender of the blossoms?

And inconsistent as it may appear when one remembers her avowed fear of discovery, yet from the moment that suspicion entered her mind the charm was gone from the blossoms and the days to follow, and she felt for the first time a resentment towards Monsieur Incognito.

Her reason told her this was an inevitable consequence, through resentment forgetfulness would come.

But her heart told her—?

Her presence at the charitable fete held by Madame la General at the Hotel Dulac was her first response, in a social way to the invitations of her Parisian acquaintances. A charity one might support without in any way committing oneself to further social plunges. She expected to feel shy and strange; she expected to be bored. But since Maman wished it so much—!

There is nothing so likely to banish shyness as success. The young Marquise could not but be conscious that she attracted attention, and that the most popular women of the court who had been pleased to show their patronage by attendance, did not in the least eclipse her own less pretentious self. People besieged Madame Dulac for introductions, and to her own surprise the debutante found herself enjoying all the gay nothings, the jests, the bright sentences tossed about her and forming a foundation for compliments delicately veiled, and the flattering by word or glance that was as the breath of life to those people of the world.

She was dressed in white of medieval cut. Heavy white silk cord was knotted about the slender waist and touched the embroidered hem. The square neck had also the simple finish of cord and above it was the one bit of color; a flat necklace of etruscan gold fitted closely about the white throat, holding alternate rubies and pearls in their curiously wrought settings. On one arm was a bracelet of the same design; and the linked fillet above her dark hair gleamed, also, with the red of rubies.

It was the age of tarletan and tinsel, of delicate zephyrs and extremes in butterfly effects. Hoop-skirts were persisted in, despite the protests of art and reason; so, the serenity of this dress, fitting close as a habit, and falling in soft straight folds with a sculpturesque effect, and with the brown-eyed Italian face above it, created a sensation.

Dumaresque watched her graciously accepting homage as a matter of course, and smiled, thinking of his prophecy that she would be magnificent at twenty-five;—she was so already.

Some women near him commented on the simplicity of her attire.

"Oh, that is without doubt the taste of the dowager; failing to influence the politics of the country she consoled herself with an attempt to make a revolution in the fashions of the age."

"And is this sensation to illustrate her ideas?" asked another. "She has rather a good manner—the girl—but the dress is a trifle theatrical, suggestive of the pages of tragedies and martyred virgins."

"Suggestive of the girl Cleopatra before she realized her power," thought the artist as he passed on. He knew that just those little remarks stamped her success a certainty, and was pleased accordingly. The dowager had expressed her opinion that Judithe would bury herself in studies if left to herself, perhaps even go back to the convent. He fancied a few such hours of adulation as this would change the ideas of any girl of nineteen as to the desirability of convents.

He noticed that the floral bower over which she presided had little left now but the ferns and green things; she had been adding money to the hospital fund. Once he noticed the blossoms left in charge of her aides while she entered the hall room on the arm of the most distinguished official present, and later, on that of one of the dowager's oldest friends. She talked with, and sold roses to the younger courtiers at exorbitant prices, but it was only the men of years and honors whom she walked beside.

Madame Dulac and Dumaresque exchanged glances of approval; as a possible general in the social field of the future, she had commenced with the tactics of absolute genius. Dumaresque wondered if she realized her own cleverness, or if it was because she honestly liked best to talk or listen to the men of years, experience, and undoubted honors.

Mrs. McVeigh was there, radiant as Aurore and with eyes so bright one would not fancy them bathed in tears so lately, or the smooth brow as containing a single anxious motherly thought. But the Marquise having heard that story of the son, wondered as she looked at her if the handsome mother had not many an anxious thought the world never suspected.

She was laughing frankly to the Marquise over the future just read in her palm by a picturesque Egyptian, who was one of the novelties added to Madame Dulac's list for the night.

Nothing less than an adoring husband had been promised her, and with the exception of a few shadowed years, not a cloud larger than the hand of a man was to cross the sky of her destiny.

"I am wishing Kenneth had come—my son, you know. Something has detained him. I certainly would have liked him to hear that promise of a step-father. Our Southern men are not devoid of jealousy—even of their mothers."

Then she passed on, a glory of azure and silver, and the Marquise felt a sense of satisfaction that the son had not come; the prejudice she felt against that unabashed American would make his presence the one black cloud across the evening.

While she was thinking of him the party about her separated, and she took advantage of a moment alone to slip the alcove back of the evergreens. It seemed the one nook unappropriated by the glittering masses of people whose voices, near and far, suggested the murmur of bees to her as she viewed it from her shadowy retreat, while covered from sight herself.

The moonlight was shining through the window of the little alcove screened by the tall palms. The music of a tender waltz movement drifted softly across to her and made perfect her little retreat. She was conscious that it had all been wonderfully and unexpectedly perfect; the success, the adulation, had given her a new definite faith in herself. How Maman would have enjoyed it. Maman, who would want every little detail of the pleasant things said and done. She wondered if it was yet too early to depart, she might reach home before the dowager slept, and tell her all the glories of it.

So thinking, she turned to enter again the glare of light to find Madame Dulac, or Madame Blanc, who had accompanied her, to tell them.

But another hand pushed aside the curtain of silk and the drooping fronds of gigantic fern. Looking up she saw a tall, young man, wearing a dark blue uniform, who bowed with grace, and stood aside that she might pass if she chose. He showed no recognition, and there was the pause of an instant. She could feel the color leave her face. Then, with an effort, she raised her eyes, and tried to speak carelessly, but the voice was little more than a whisper, in which she said:

"You!"

His face brightened and grew warm. The tone itself told more than she knew; a man would be stupid who could not read it, and this one, though youthful, did not look stupid.

"Madame Unknown," he murmured, in the voice she had not been able to forget, "I am not so lost here as at Fontainbleau. May I ask some one to present me to your notice?"

At that she smiled, and the smile was contagious.

"You may not," she replied frankly, recovering herself, and assuming a tone of lightness to conquer the fluttering in her throat. "The list of names I have had to remember this evening is most formidable, another one would make the last feather here," and she tapped her forehead significantly. "I was just about to flee from it all when—"

She hesitated and looked about her in an uncertain way. He at once placed a chair for her. She allowed her hand to rest on the back of it as if undecided.

"You will not be so unkind?" he said; and his words held a plea. She answered it by seating herself.

"Well?"

At the interrogation he smiled.

"Will you not allow me, Madame, to introduce myself?"

"But, Monsieur Incognito, consider; I have remembered you best because you have not done so; it was a novelty. But all those people whose names were spoken to me this evening—pouf!" and she blew a feathery spray of fern from her palms, "they have all drifted into oblivion like that. Do you wish, then, to be presented and—to follow them?"

"I refuse to follow them there—from you."

His tones were so low, so even, so ardent, that she looked startled and drew her breath quickly.

"You are bold, Monsieur," and though she strove to speak haughtily she was too much of a girl to be severe when her eyes met his.

"Why not?" he asked, growing bolder as she grew more timid. "You grant me one moment out of your life; then you mean to close the gates against me—if you can. In that brief time I must condense all that another man should take months to say to you. I have been speaking to you daily, however, for six weeks and—"

"Monsieur! Six weeks?"

"Every day," he assented, smiling down at her. "Of course you did not hear me. I was very confidential about it. I even tried to stop it entirely when I was allowed to believe that Mademoiselle was Madame."

"But it is quite true—she is Madame."

"Certainly; yet you let me think—well, I forgive you for it now, since I have found you again."

"Monsieur!"—she half arose.

"Will Mademoiselle have her fortune told?" asked a voice beside them, and the beringed Egyptian pushed aside the palms, "or Monsieur, perhaps?"

"Both of us," he assented with eagerness; "that is, if Mademoiselle chooses." He dropped two pieces of gold in the beaded purse held out. "Come," he half whispered to the Marquise, "let me see if oblivion is really the doom fate reads against me."

She half put out her hand, thinking that after all it was only a part of the games of the night—the little amusements with which purses were filled for charity; then some sudden after thought made her draw it back.

"You fear the decision?" he asked.

She did not fear the decision he meant, but she did fear—

"No, Monsieur, I am not afraid. Oh, yes; she may read my palm, it is all a jest, of course."

The Egyptian held the man's hand at which she had not yet glanced. She took the hand of the Marquise.

"Pardon, Madame, it is no jest, it is a science," she said briefly, and holding their hands, glanced from one to the other.

"Firm hands, strong hands, both," she said, and then bent over that of the Marquise; as she did so the expression of casual interest faded from her face; she slowly lifted her head and met the gaze of the owner.

"Well, well? Am I to commit murders?" she asked; but her smile was an uneasy one; the gaze of the Egyptian made her shrink.

"Not with your own hand," said the woman, slowly studying the well-marked palm; "but you will live for awhile surrounded by death and danger. You will hate, and suffer for the hate you feel. You will love, and die for the love you will not take—you—"

But the Marquise drew her hand away petulantly.

"Oh! I am to die of love, then?—I!" and her light laugh was disdainful. "That is quite enough of the fates for one evening;" she regarded the pink palm doubtfully. "See, Monsieur, it does not look so terrible; yet it contains all those horrors."

"Naturally it would not contain them," said the Egyptian. "You will force yourself to meet what you call the horrors. You will sacrifice yourself. You will meet the worst as the women of '93 ascended the guillotine—laughing."

"Ah, what pictures! Monsieur, I wish you a better fortune."

"Than to die of love?" he asked, and met her eyes; "that were easier than to live without it."

"Chut!—you speak like the cavalier of a romance."

"I feel like one," he confessed, "and it rests on your mercy whether the romance has a happy ending."

She flashed one admonishing glance at him and towards the woman who bent over his hand.

"Oh, she does not comprehend the English," he assured her; "and if she does she will only hear the echo of what she reads in my hand."

"Proceed," said the Marquise to the Egyptian, "we wait to hear the list of Monsieur's romances."

"You will live by the sword, but not die by the sword," said the woman. "You will have one great passion in your life. Twice the woman will come in your path. The first time you will cross the seas to her, the second time she comes to you—and—ah!—"

She reached again for the hand of the Marquise and compared them. The two young people looked, not at her, but at each other.

In the eyes of the Marquise was a certain petulant rebellion, and in his the appealing, the assuring, the ardent gaze that met and answered her.

"It is peculiar—this," continued the woman. "I have never seen anything like it before; the same mark, the same, Mademoiselle, Monsieur; you will each know tragedies in your experience, and the lives are linked together."

"No!"—and again the Marquise drew her hand away. "It is no longer amusing," she remarked in English, "when those people think it their duty to pair couples off like animals in the ark."

Her face had flushed, though she tried to look indifferent. The Egyptian had stepped back and was regarding her curiously.

"Do not cross the seas, Mademoiselle; all of content will be left behind you."

"Wait," and the Monsieur Incognito put out his hand. "You call the lady 'Mademoiselle,' but your guess has not been good;" and he pointed to a plain ring on the hand of the Marquise.

"I call her Mademoiselle because she never has been a wife, and—she never will be a wife. There are marriages without wedding rings, and there are wedding rings without marriages; pardon!—" and passing between the ferns and palms she was gone.

"That is true!" half whispered the Marquise, looking up at him; "her words almost frighten me."

"They need not," and the caress in his eyes made her drop her own; "all your world of Paris knows the romance of your marriage. You are more of a celebrity than you may imagine; my knowledge of that made me fear to approach you here."

"The fear did not last long," and she laughed, the coquetry of the sex again uppermost. "For how many seconds did you tremble on the threshold?"

"Long enough to avoid any friends who had planned to present me."

"And why?"

"Lest it might offend to have the person thrust on you whom you would not know among less ceremonious surroundings."

"Yet you came alone?"

"I could not help that, I had to see you, even though you refused to recognize me; I had to see you. Did I not prophecy there in the wood that we should meet again? Even the flowers you gave me I—"

"Monsieur, no more!" and she rose from the chair with a certain decision. "It was a thoughtless, childish farce played there at Fontainbleau. But—it is over. I—I have felt humiliated by that episode, Monsieur. Young ladies in France do not converse with strangers. Pray go back to England and forget that you found one so indiscreet—oh! I know what you would say, Monsieur," as he was about to speak. "I know many of these ladies of the court would only laugh over such an episode—it would be but a part of their amusements for the day; but I, I do not belong to the court or their fashions. I am only ashamed, and ask that you forget it. I would not want any one to think—I mean that I—"

She had commenced so bravely with her wise, firm little speech, but at the finale she wavered and broke down miserably.

"Don't!"—he broke in as a tear fell on the fan she held; "you make me feel like a brute who has persecuted you; don't cry. Come here to the window; listen to me. I—I loved you that first day; you just looked at me, spoke to me and it was all over with me. I can't undo it. I can go away, and I will, rather than make you unhappy; but I can't forget you. I have never forgotten you for an hour. That was why. Oh, I know it is the wildest, maddest, most unpardonable thing I am saying to you. Your friends would want to call me out and shoot me for it, and I shall be happy to give them the chance," he added, grimly. "But don't, for Heaven's sake, think that my memory of you would be less than respectful. Why, I—I adore you. I am telling it to you like a fool, but I only ask you to not laugh until I am out of hearing. I—will go now—and do not even ask your forgiveness, because—well I can't honestly say I am sorry."

Sorry! She thought of those days when she had wakened to a new world because his eyes and his voice haunted her; she heard him acknowledge the same power, and he spoke of forgiveness as though convicted of a fault. Well, she had not been able to prevent the same fault, so, how dared she blame him? He need not know, of course, how well she had remembered; yet she might surely be a little kind for all that.

"Monsieur Incognito!"

Her voice had an imperious tone; she remembered she must not be too kind. He was already among the palms, in the full light of the salon, and he was boy enough for all the color to leave his face as he heard the low command. She had heard him declare his devotion, yet she had recalled him.

"Madame," he said, and stood stubbornly the width of the alcove from her, though he was conscious of all tender words rushing to his lips. She was so adorable; a woman in mentality, but the veriest girl as to the emotions his words had awakened.

"Monsieur," she said, without looking at him, "I do not truly believe you meant to offend me; therefore I have nothing to forgive."

"You angel!" he half whispered, but she heard him.

"No, I am not that," and she flashed a quick glance at him, "only I think I comprehend you, and to comprehend is to forgive, is it not? I—I cannot listen to the—affection you speak of. Love and marriage are not for me. Did not the Egyptian say it? Yes; that was quite true. But I can shake hands in good-bye, Monsieur Incognito. Your English people always do that, eh? Well, so will I."

She held out her hand; he took it in both his own and his lips touched it.

"No! no!" she said softly, and shook her head; "that is not an English custom." He lifted his head and looked at her.

"Why do you call me English?" he asked, and she smiled, glad to break that tenseness of feeling by some commonplace.

"It was very simple, Monsieur; first it was the make of your hat, I read the name of the maker in the crown that day in the park; then you spoke English; you said you had just arrived from England; and the English are so certain to get lost unless they go in groups—therefore!"

She had enumerated all those reasons on her white fingers. She glanced at him, with an adorable smile as a finale, so confident she had proven her case.

"And you French have no fondness for the English people," he said slowly, looking at her. "I wear an American uniform tonight; suppose I am an American? I am tempted to disobey and tell you who I am, in hopes you will not send me into exile quite so soon."

"No, no, no!" she breathed hurriedly. "You must go; and you must remain Monsieur Incognito; thus it will be only a comedy, a morsel of romance. But if I knew you well—ah! I do not know what it would be then. I am afraid to think. Yes, I confess it, Monsieur, you make me afraid. I tell myself you are a foreign ogre, yet when you speak to me—ah!"

She put out her hands as he came close. But he knelt at her feet, kissing her hands, her wrists, the folds of her dress, then lifted his face glowing, ardent, to her own.

"I shall make you love me some day," he whispered; "not now, perhaps, but some day."

She stared at him without a word. She had received proposals of marriage, dignified, ceremonious affairs submitted to her by the dowager, but from this stranger came the first avowal of love she had ever listened to. A stranger; yet he held her hand; she felt herself drawn towards him by a force she could not combat. Her other arm was over the back of a chair, slowly she lifted it, then he felt her hand touch his hair and the touch was a caress.

"My queen!"

"Co—now," she said so lowly. It was almost a whisper. He arose, pressed her hand to his lips and turned away, when a woman's voice spoke among the palms:

"Did you say in this corner, Madame? I have not found him; Kenneth!"

"It is my mother," he said softly, and was about to draw back the alcove draperies when the Marquise took a step towards him, staring strangely into his face.

"Your Mother!" and her tones expressed only doubt and dread. "No, no! Why, I—I know the voice; it is Madame McVeigh; she called Kenneth, her son—"

He smiled an affirmative.

"Yes; you will forgive me for having my name spoken to you after all? But there seems to be no help for it. So you see I am not English despite the hat, and my name is Kenneth McVeigh."

His smile changed to quick concern as he noticed the strange look on her face, and the swaying movement towards the chair. He put out his hand, but she threw herself back from him with a shuddering movement of repulsion.

And a moment later the palms parted beside Mrs. McVeigh, and she was startled at sight of her son's face.

"Kenneth! Why, what is wrong?"

"A lady has fainted there in the alcove," he said, in a voice which sounded strange to her; "will you go to her?"

"Fainted? Why, Kenneth!—"

"Yes; I think it is the Marquise de Caron."



CHAPTER VIII.

The dowager was delighted to find that the one evening of complete social success had changed her daughter-in-law into a woman of society. It had modified her prejudices. She accepted invitations without her former protests, and was only careful that the people whom she visited should be of the most distinguished.

Dumaresque watched her with interest. There seemed much of deliberation back of every move she made. The men of mark were the only ones to whom she gave encouragement, and she found several so responsive that there was no doubt, now, as to whether she was awake to her own power—more, she had a mind to use it. She was spoken of as one of the beauties of the day.

The McVeighs had gone to Italy, the mother to visit a relative, the son to view the late battle fields on the other side of the Pyrenees and acquaint himself with military matters wherever he found them.

He had called on the Marquise the day following the fete at the Hotel Dulac. She had quite recovered her slight indisposition of the preceding evening, and there had been no hesitation about receiving him. She was alone, and she met him with the fine, cool, gracious manner reserved for the people who were of no importance in her life.

Looking at her, listening to her, he could scarcely believe this could be the girl who had provoked him into a declaration of love less than a day ago, and in whose eyes he had surprised a fervor responding to his own. She called him Lieutenant McVeigh, with an utter disregard of the fact that she had ever called him anything else.

When in sheer desperation he referred to their first meeting, she listened with a chill little smile.

"Yes," she agreed; "Fontainbleau was beautiful in the spring time. Maman was especially fond of it. She, herself, had been telling a friend lately of the very unconventional meeting under the bushes of the Mademoiselle and Monsieur Incognito, and he—the friend—had thought it delightfully amusing, good enough for the thread of a comedy."

Then she sent some kindly message to Mrs. McVeigh, but refused to see the wonder—the actual pain—in the eyes where before she had remembered those half slumberous smiles, or that brief space of passionate pleading. He interrupted some cool remark by rising.

"It is scarcely worth while—all this," he said, abruptly. "Had you closed your doors against me after last night I should have understood—I should have gone away adoring you just the same. But to open them, to receive me, and then—"

His voice trembled in spite of himself. All at once he appeared so much more boyish than ever before—so helpless in a sort of misery he could not account for, she turned away her head.

"With the ocean between us my love could not have hurt you. You might have let me keep that." He had recovered control of his voice and his eyes swept over her from head to foot like blue lightning. "I bid you good-day, Madame."

She made an inclination of the head, but did not speak. She had reached the limit of her self control. His words, "You might have let me keep that," were an accusation she dared not discuss.

When the door closed behind him she could see nothing, for the blur of tears in her eyes. Madame La Marquise received no other callers that day.

In the days following she compared him with the courtiers, the diplomats, the very clever men whom she met, and told herself he was only a boy—a cadet of twenty-two. Why should she remember his words, or forget for one instant that infamy with which his name was connected?

"He goes on his knees to me only because he has grown weary of the slave-women of the plantations," she told herself in deepest disgust. Sometimes she would look curiously at the hands once covered by his kisses. And once she threw a withered bunch of forget-me-nots from her window, at night, and crept down at daybreak next morning and found it, and took it back to her room.

It looked as though the boy was holding his own despite the diplomats.

When she saw him again it was at an auction of articles donated for a charity under the patronage of the Empress, and open to the public. Cotton stuffs justled my lady's satins, and the half-world stared at short range into the faces whose owners claimed coronets.

Many leading artists had donated sketches of their more pretentious work. It was to that department the Marquise made her way, and entering the gallery by a side door, found that the crowd had separated her from the Countess Biron and the rest of their party.

Knowing that sooner or later they would find her there, she halted, examining some choice bits of color near the door. A daintily dressed woman, who looked strangely familiar, was standing near with apparently the same intent. But she stood so still; and the poise of her head betrayed that she was listening to something. The something was a group of men back of them, where the black and white sketches were on exhibition. The corridor was not wide, and their conversation was in English and not difficult to understand if one gave attention. The Marquise noted that Dumaresque was among them, and they stood before his donation of sketches, of which the principal one was a little study of the octoroon dancer, Kora.

Then in a flash she understood who the person was who listened. She was the original of the picture, drawn there no doubt by a sort of vanity to hear the artistic praise, or personal comment. But a swift glance showed her it had been a mistake; the dark brows were frowning, the full lip was bitten nervously, and the small ungloved hand was clenched.

The men were laughing carelessly over some argument, not noticing that they had a listener; the people moving along the corridor, single and in groups, hid the two who remained stationary, and whose backs were towards them. It was most embarrassing, and the Marquise was about to move away when she heard a voice there was no mistaking—the voice she had not been able to forget.

"No, I don't agree with you;" he was saying, "and you would not find half so much to admire in the work if the subject were some old plantation mammy equally well painted. Come over and see them where they grow. After that you will not be making celebrities of them."

"If they grow many like that I am most willing, Monsieur."

"I, too. When do we start? I can fancy no land so well worth a visit but that of Mohammed."

The first speaker uttered an exclamation of annoyance, but the others laughed.

"Oh, we have seen other men of your land here," remarked Dumaresque. "They are not all so discreet as yourself. We have learned that they do not usually build high walls between themselves and pretty slaves."

"You are right," agreed the American. "Sorry I can't contradict you. But these gorgeous Koras and Phrynes remind me of a wild blossom in our country; it is exquisite in form, beautiful to the eye, but poison if touched to the lips. It is called the yellow jasmine."

"No doubt you are right," remarked one of the men as Kora dropped her veil over her face. "You are at all events poetical."

"And the reason of their depravity?"

"The fact that they are the outgrowth of the worst passions of both races—at least so I have heard it said by men who make more of a study of such questions than I."

A party of people moved between the two women and the speakers. The Marquise heard Kora draw a sobbing breath. She hesitated an instant, her own eyes flashing, her cheeks burning. He to sit in judgment on others—he!

Then she laid her hand on the wrist of Kora.

"Come with me," she said, softly, in English, and the girl with one glance of tear-wet eyes, obeyed.

The Marquise opened the door beside her, a few steps further and another door led into an ante-room belonging to a portion of the building closed for repairs.

"Why do you weep?" she asked briefly, but the kindly clasp of her wrist told that the questioner was not without sympathy, and the girl strove to compose herself while staring at the other in amazement.

"You—I have seen you—I remember you," she said, wonderingly, "the Marquise de Caron!"

"Yes;" the face of the Marquise flushed, "and you are the dancer—Kora. Why did you weep at their words?"

"Since you know who I am, Madame, I need not hesitate to tell you more," she said, though she did hesitate, and looked up, deprecatingly, to the Marquise, who stood a few paces away leaning against the window.

There was only one chair in the room. Kora perceived for the first time that it had been given to her while the Marquise stood. She arose to her feet, and with a deference that lent a subtile grace to her expression, offered it to her questioner.

"No; resume your seat;" the command was a trifle imperious, but it was softened the next instant by the smile with which she said: "A dear old lady taught me that to the burdened horse we should always give the right of way. We must make easier the way of those who bear sorrows. You have the sorrow today—what is it?"

"I am not sure that you will understand, Madame," and the girl's velvety black eyes lifted and then sought the floor again. "But you, perhaps, heard what they said out there, and the man I—I—well, he was there."

The lips of the Marquise grew a trifle rigid, but Kora was too much engaged with her own emotion to perceive it.

"I suppose I shouldn't speak of him to a—a lady who can't understand people who live in a different sort of world. But you mean to be kind, and I suppose have some reason for asking?" and she glanced at the lady in the window. "So—"

The Marquise looked at her carefully; yes, the girl was undeniably handsome; a medium sized, well-turned figure, small hands and feet, graceful in movement, velvety oriental eyes, and the deep cream complexion over which the artists had raved. She had the manner of one well trained, but was strangely diffident before this lady of the other world. The Marquise drew a deep breath as she realized how attractive she could be to a man who cared.

"You are a fool," she said, harshly, "to care for a man who speaks so of your people."

"Oh, Madame!" and the graceful form drooped helplessly. "I knew you could never understand. But if folks only loved where it was wise to love, all the trouble of the world would be ended."

The hand of the Marquise went to her throat for an instant.

"And then it is true, all they said there," continued Kora; "that is why—why I had let you see me cry; what he said is true—and I—I belong in his country where the yellow jasmine grows. There are times when I never stop to think—weeks when I am satisfied that I have money and a fine apartment. Then, all at once, in a minute like this, I see that it does not weigh down the one drop of black blood in my hand there. Sometimes I would sell my soul to wipe it out, and I can't! I can't!"

Her emotions were again overwhelming her. The Marquise watched her clench the shapely hands with their tapering fingers and many rings, the pretty graceful bit of human furniture in an establishment for such as he!

"An oriental prince was entertained by the Empress last week," she remarked, abruptly. "His mother was a black woman, yours was not."

"I know; I try to understand it—all the difference that is made. I can't do it; I have not the brain. I can only"—and she smiled bitterly—"only learn to dance a little, and you don't need brain for that. My God! How can they expect us to have brain when our mothers and grandmothers had to live under laws forbidding a slave to dispute any command of a white man? Madame, ladies like you—ladies of France—could not understand. I could not tell you. Sometimes I think money is all that can help you in this world. But even money can't kill the poison he spoke of. We might be free for generations but the curse would stay on us, because away back in the past our people had been slaves."

"So have the ancestors of those men you listened to," said the Marquise, and the girl looked at her wonderingly.

"They! Why, Madame!"

"It is quite true. Everyone of them is the descendant of slaves of the past. Every ancient race was at some time the slaves of some stronger nation. Many of the masters of today are the descendants of people who were bought and sold with the land for hundreds of years. Think of that when they taunt you with slavery!"

"Oh! Madame!"

"And remember that every king and queen of Egypt for centuries, every one told of in their bibles and histories, would look black beside the woman who was your mother! Chut! do not look so startled! The Caucassian of today is now believed by men of science to be only a bleached negro. To be sure, it has taken thousands of years, and the ice-fields and cave dwellings of the North to do the bleaching. But man came originally from the Orient, the very womb of the earth from which only creatures of color come forth."

"You!—a white lady! a noble! say this to comfort me; why?" asked the girl. She had risen again and stood back of the chair. She looked half frightened.

"I say it because, if you study such questions earnestly, you will perceive how the opinion of those self-crowned judges will dwindle; they will no longer loom above you because of your race. My child, you are as royal as they by nature. It is the cultivation, the training, the intellect built up through generations, by which they are your superiors today. If your own life is commendable you need not be ashamed because of your race."

Kora turned her head away, fingering the rings on her pretty hands.

"You—it is no use trying to make a lady like you understand," she muttered, "but you know who I am, and it is too late now!"

She attempted to speak with the nonchalance customary to her, but the entire interview, added to the conversation in the corridor, had touched depths seldom stirred, and never before appealed to by a woman. What other woman would have dared question her like that? And it was not that she had been awed by the rank and majesty in which this Marquise moved; she, Kora—who had laughed in the face of a Princess whose betrothed was seen in Kora's carriage! No; it was not the rank, it was the gentle, yet slightly imperious womanliness, back of which could be felt a fund of sympathy new and strange to her; it appealed to her as the reasoning of a man would appeal; and man was the only compelling force hitherto acknowledged by Kora.

The Marquise looked at her thoughtfully, but did not speak. She was too much of a girl herself to understand entirely the nature before her or its temptations. They looked, really, about the same age, yet for all the mentality of the Marquise, she knew Kora was right—the world of emotions that was an open book to the bewitching octoroon was an unknown world to her.

"The things I do not understand I will not presume to judge," she said, at last, very gently; "but is there no one anywhere in this world whose affection for you would be strong enough to help you live away from these people who speak of you as those men spoke, yet who are themselves accountable for the faults over which they laugh together."

"Oh, what you have said has turned me against that Trouvelot—that dandy!" she said, with a certain vehemence. "He is only a Count of yesterday, after all; I'll remember that! Still; it is all the habit of life, Madame, and I never knew any other. Look here; when I was twelve I was told by an old woman to be careful of my hands, of my good looks every way, for if I was handsome as my mother, I would never need to do housework; that was the beginning! Well!" and she smiled bitterly, "I have not had to do it, but it was through no planning of theirs."

"And your mother?"

"Dead; and my father, too. He was her master."

"It is that spendthrift—Trouvelot, you care for?"

"Not this minute," confessed the girl; "but," and she shrugged her shoulders, "I probably shall tomorrow! I know myself well enough for that; and I won't lie—to you! You saw how he could make me cry? It is only the man we care for who can hurt us."

The Marquise did not reply; she was staring out of the window. Kora, watching her, did not know if she heard. She had heard and was angry with herself that her heart grew lighter when she heard the name of Kora's lover.

"I—I will not intrude longer, Madame," said the girl at last. "What you've said will make me think more. I never heard of what you've told me today. I wish there were women in America like you; oh, I wish there were! There are good white ladies there, of course, but they don't teach the slaves to think; they only tell them to have faith! They teach them from their bible; and all I could ever remember of it was: 'Servants, obey your masters;' and I hated it. So you see, Madame, it is too late for me; I don't know any other life; I—"

"I will help you to a different life whenever you are willing to leave Paris," said the Marquise.

"You would do that, Madame?"

Kora dropped into the chair again, covering her face with her hands. After a little she looked up, and the cunning of her class was in her eyes.

"Is it to separate me from him?" she asked, bluntly. "I know they want him to marry; are you a friend of his family?"

The Marquise smiled at that.

"I really do not know if he has a family," she replied. "I am interested because it seems so pitiful that a girl should never have had a chance to live commendably. It is not too late. In your own country a person of your intelligence and education should be able to do much good among the children of the free colored people. You would be esteemed. You—"

"Esteemed!" Kora smiled skeptically, thinking no doubt of the half-world circle over which she was a power in her adopted city; she, who had only to show herself in the spectacle to make more money than a year's earnings in American school teaching. She knew she could not really dance, but she did pose in a manner rather good; and then, her beauty!

"I was a fool when I came here—to Paris," she said woefully. "I thought everybody would know I was colored, so I told. But they would not know," and she held out her hand, looking at the white wrist, "I could have said I was a West Indian, a Brazilian, or a Spanish Creole—as many others do. But it is all too late. America was never kind to my people, or me. You mean to be kind, Madame; but you don't know colored folks. They would be the first to resent my educational advantages; not that I know much; books were hard work for me, and Paris was the only one I could learn to read easy. As for America, I own up, I'm afraid of America."

The Marquise thought she knew why, but only said:

"If you change your mind you can let me know. I have a property in New Orleans. Some day I may go there. I could protect you if you would help protect yourself." She looked at the lovely octoroon with meaning, and the black velvety eyes fell under that regard.

"You can always learn where I am in Paris, and if you should change your mind—" At the door she paused and said kindly: "My poor girl, if you remain here he will break your heart."

"They usually do when a woman loves them, Madame," replied Kora, with a sad little smile; she had learned so much in the book of Paris.

The friends of the Marquise were searching for her when she emerged from the ante-room. The Countess Biron confessed herself in despair.

"In such a mixed assembly! and all alone! How was one to know what people you might meet, or what adventures."

"Oh, I am not adventurous, Countess," was the smiling reply; "and let me whisper: I have been talking all of the time with one person, one very pretty person, and it has been an instructive half hour."

"Pretty? Well, that is assurance as to sex," remarked Madame Choudey, with a glance towards one of the others of the party.

"And if you will watch that door you will be enlightened as to the individual," said the Marquise.

Three pair of eyes turned with alertness to the door. At that moment it opened, and Kora appeared. The lace veil no longer hid her beautiful eyes—all the more lovely for that swift bath of tears. She saw the Marquise and her friends, but passed as if she had never seen one of them before; Kora had her own code.

"Are you serious, Judithe de Caron?" gasped the Countess Helene. "Were you actually—conversing—with that—demi-mondaine?"

"My dear Marquise!" purred Madame Choudey, "when she does not even pretend to be respectable!"

"It is because she does not pretend that I spoke with her. Honesty should receive some notice."

"Honesty! Good heavens!" cried Madame Ampere, who had not yet spoken, but who expressed horror by her eyes, "where then do you find your standards for such judgment?"

"Now, listen!" and the Marquise turned to the three with a quizzical smile, "if Kora lived exactly the same life morally, but was a ruler of the fashionable world, instead of the other one; if she wore a crown of state instead of the tinsel of the varieties, you would not exclaim if she addressed me."

"Oh, I must protest, Marquise," began Madame Ampere in shocked remonstrance, but the Marquise smiled and stopped her.

"Yesterday," she said slowly, "I saw you in conversation with a man who has the panels of his carriage emblazoned with the Hydrangea—also called the Hortensia."

The shocked lady looked uncomfortable.

"What then? since it was the Emperor's brother."

"Exactly; the brother of the Emperor, and both of them the sons of a mother beside whom beautiful Kora is a thing of chastity."

"The children could not help the fact that they were all half-brothers," laughed the Countess Helene.

"But this so-called Duke could help parading the doubtful honor of his descent; yet who fails to return his bow? And I have yet to learn that his mother was ignored by the ladies of her day. Those Hortensias on his carriage are horrible to me; they are an attempt to exalt in a queen the immorality condemned in a subject."

"Ah! You make my head swim with your theories," confessed the Countess. "How do you find time to study them all?"

"They require no study; one meets them daily in the street or court. The difficulty is to cease thinking of them—to enjoy a careless life when justice is always calling somewhere for help."

"I refuse to be annoyed by the calls, yet am comfortable," said Madame Choudey. "The people who imagine they hear justice calling have had, too often, to follow the calls into exile."

"That is true," agreed her friend; "take care Marquise! Your theories are very interesting, but, truly, you are a revolutionist."

Their little battle of words did not prevent them parting with smiles and all pleasantry. But the Countess Biron, to whose house the Marquise was going, grimaced and looked at her with a smile of doubt when they were alone.

"Do you realize how daring you are Judithe?—to succeed socially you should not appeal to the brains of people, but to their vanities."

"Farewell, my social ambitions!" laughed the Marquise. "Dear Countess, pray do not scold! I could not help it. Why must the very respectable world see only the sins of the unfortunate, and save all their charity for the heads with coronets? Maman is not like that; she is always gentle with the people who have never been taught goodness; though she is severe on those who disgrace good training. I like her way best; and Alain? Well, he only told me to do my own thinking, to be sure I was right before I spoke, and to let no other consideration weigh at all."

"Yes! and he died in exile because he let no worldly consideration weigh," said the Countess Helene grimly.



CHAPTER IX.

At the entrance to the gallery the Marquise saw Dumaresque on the step, and with him Kenneth McVeigh. She entered the carriage, hoping the Countess would not perceive them; but the hope was in vain, she did, and she motioned them both to her to learn if Mrs. McVeigh had also unexpectedly returned.

She had not. Italy was yet attractive to her, and the Lieutenant had come alone. He was to await her arrival, whenever she chose, and then their holiday would be over. When they left Paris again it would be for America.

He smiled in the same lazy, yet deferential way, as the Countess chatted and questioned him. He confessed he did not remember why he had returned; at least he could not tell in a crowd, or with cynical Dumaresque listening to him.

"Invite him home, and he will vow it was to see you," said the artist.

"I mean to," she retorted; "but do not judge all men by yourself, Monsieur Loris, for I suspect Lieutenant McVeigh has a conscience."

"I have," he acknowledged, "too much of one to take advantage of your invitation. Some day, when you are not tired from the crowds, I shall come, if you will allow me."

"No, no; come now!" insisted the Countess, impulsively; "you will rest me; I assure you it is true! We have been with women—women all morning! So take pity on us. We want to hear all about the battle grounds and fortresses you were to inspect. The Marquise, especially, is a lover of wars."

"And of warriors?" queried Dumaresque; but the Countess paid no attention to him.

"Yes, she is really a revolutionist, Monsieur; so come and enlighten us as to the latest methods of those amiable patriots."

The Marquise had given him a gracious little bow, and had politely shown interest in their remarks to such an extent that the Countess did not notice her silence. But during the brief glance she noticed that the blue eyes had dark circles under them, but they were steady for all that. He looked tired, but he also looked more the master of himself than when they last met; she need fear no further pleading.

The Countess prevailed, and he entered the carriage. Dumaresque was also invited, but was on some committee of arrangements and could not leave.

As they were about to drive away the Marquise called him.

"Oh, Monsieur Loris, one moment! I want the black and white sketch of your Kora. Pray have it bid in for me."

It was the first time she had ever called him Loris, except in her own home, and as a partial echo of the dowager. His eyes thanked her, and Kenneth McVeigh received the benefit both of her words and the look.

"But, my dear Marquise, it will give me pleasure to make you something finer of the same subject."

"No, no; only the sketch. I will value it as a souvenir of—well—do not let any one else have it."

Then she bowed, flashed a rare smile at him, and they wheeled away with McVeigh facing her and noting with his careless smile every expression of her coquetry. He had gone away a boy—so she had called him; but he had come back man enough to hide the hurts she gave him, and willing to let her know it.

Someway he appeared more as he had when she met him first under the beeches; then he had seemed so big, so strong, so masterful, that she had never thought of his years. But she knew now he was younger than he looked.

She had plenty of time to think of this, and of many other things, during the drive.

The Countess monopolized the young officer with her questions. He endeavored to make the replies she invited, and neither of them appeared to note that the share of the Marquise was limited to an interested expression, and an occasional smile.

She studied his well-formed, strong hands, and thought of the night they had held her own—thought of all the impetuous, passionate words; try as she would to drive them away they came back with a rush as his cool, widely different tones fell on her ear. What a dissembler the fellow was! All that evil nature which she knew about was hidden under an exterior so engaging! "If one only loved where it was wise to love, all the sorrows of the world would be ended," those words of the pretty figureante haunted her, with all their meaning beating through her brain. What a farce seemed the careless, empty chatter beside her! It grew unbearable, to feel his careless glance sweep across her face, to hear him laugh carelessly, to be conscious of the fact that after all he was the stronger; he could face her easily, graciously, and she did not dare even meet his eyes lest he should, after all, see; the thought of her weakness frightened her; suppose he should compel her to the truth. Suppose—

She felt half hysterical; the drive had never before been so long. She feared she must scream—do something to break through this horrible chain of circumstances, linking them for even so short a space within touch of each other. And he was the man she had promised herself to hate, to make suffer, to—

Some one did scream; but it was the Countess. Out of a side street came a runaway team, a shouting man heralding their approach. At that point street repairs had left only a narrow carriage-way, and a wall of loose stone; there was no time to get out of the way; no room to turn. There was a collision, a crash! The horses of the Countess leaped aside, the right front wheel struck the heap of stone, flinging the driver from his seat. He fell, and did not move again.

At that sight the Countess uttered a gasp and sank to the bottom of the carriage. The Marquise stooped over her only for an instant, while the carriage righted itself and all four wheels were on a level once more; the horses alone had been struck, and were maddened with fear, and in that madness lay their only danger now.

She lifted her head, and the man opposite, in her instant of shrinking, had leaped over the back of the seat to secure the lines of the now thoroughly wild animals.

One line was dragging between them on the ground. Someway he maintained his footing on the carriage pole long enough to secure the dragging line, and when he gained the driver's seat the Marquise was beside him.

She knew what lay before them, and he did not—a dangerous curve, a steep embankment—and they had passed the last street where they could have turned into a less dangerous thoroughfare.

People ran out and threw up their hands and shouted. She heard him fling an oath at them for adding fury to the maddened animals.

"It is no use," she said, and laid her hand on his. He turned and met her eyes. No veil of indifference was between them now, no coquetry; all pretense was swept aside and the look they exchanged was as a kiss.

"You love me—now?" he demanded, half fiercely.

"Now, and always, from the first hour you looked at me!" she said, with her hand on his wrist. His grip tightened on the lines, and the blood leaped into his face.

"My love, my love!" he whispered; and she slipped on her knees beside him that she might not see the danger to be faced.

"It is no use, Kenneth, Kenneth! There is the bank ahead—they cannot stop—it will kill us! It is just ahead!"

She was muttering disjointed sentences, her face averted, her arms clasping him.

"Kill us? Don't you believe it!" And he laughed a trifle nervously. "Look up, sweetheart; the danger is over. I knew it when you first spoke. See! They are going steady now."

They were. He had gained control of them in time to make the dangerous curve in safety. They were a quarter of the way along the embankment. Workmen there stared at the lady and gentleman on the coachman's seat, and at the rather rapid gait; but the real danger was over.

They halted at a little cafe, which was thrown into consternation at sight of a lady insensible in the bottom of the carriage; but a little wine and the administrations of the Marquise aided her recovery, and in a short time enabled her to hear the account of the wild race.

The driver had a broken arm, and one of the horses was slightly injured. Lieutenant McVeigh had sent back about the man, and secured another team for the drive home. He was now walking up and down the pavement in front of the cafe, in very good spirits, and awaiting the pleasure of the Countess.

They drove home at once; the Countess voluably grateful to Kenneth, and apparently elated over such a tremendous adventure. The young officer shared her high spirits, and the Marquise was the only silent member of the party. After the danger was passed she scarcely spoke. When he helped her into the carriage the pressure of his hand and one whispered word sent the color sweeping over her face, leaving it paler than before. She scarcely lifted her eyes for the rest of the drive, and after retiring for a few moments' rest, apparently, broke down entirely; the nervous strain had proven rather trying, and she was utterly unable—to her own regret—to join them at lunch.

Lieutenant McVeigh begged to withdraw, but the Countess Biron, who declared she had never been the heroine of a thrilling adventure, before, insisted that she at least was quite herself again, and would feel cheated if their heroic deliverer did not remain for a lunch, even though it be a tete-a-tete affair; and she, of course, wanted to hear all the details of the horror; that child, Judithe, had not seemed to remember much; she supposed she must have been terribly frightened. "Yet, one never knew how the Marquise would be effected by any thing! She was always surprising people; usually in delightful ways, of course."

"Of course," assented her guest, with a reminiscent gleam and a wealth of absolute happiness in the blue eyes. "Yes, she is rather surprising at times; she surprised me!"

* * * * *

"Judithe, my child, it was an ideal adventure," insisted the Countess, an hour after the Lieutenant had left her, and she had repaired to the room where the Marquise was supposed to be resting. Her nervousness had evidently not yet abated, for she was walking up and down the floor.

"An absolutely ideal adventure, and a heroic foreigner to the rescue! What a god-send that I invited him! And I really believe he enjoyed it. I never before saw him so gay, so charming! There are men, you know, to whom danger is a tonic, and my friend's son is like that, surely. Did he not seem at all afraid?"

"Not that I observed."

"Did he not say anything?"

"Y—yes; he swore at the people who shouted and tried to stop the horses."

"You should not have let yourself hear that," said the Countess, reproachfully. "I thought he was so perfect, and was making my little romance about him—or could, if you would only show a little more interest. Ah! at your age I should have been madly in love with the fine fellow, just for what he did today; but you! Still, it would be no use, I suppose. He is fiancee, you know. Yes; the mother told me; a fine settlement; I saw her picture—very pretty."

"American—I suppose?"

"Oh, yes; their lands join, and she is a great heiress. The name—the name is Loring—Genevieve? No—Gertrude, Mademoiselle Gertrude Loring. Ah! so strong he was, so heroic. If she loves him she should have seen him today."

"Yes," agreed the Marquise, with a curious little smile, "she should."

* * * * *

Two hours later she was on her knees beside the dowager's couch, her face hidden and all her energy given to one plea:

"Maman—Maman! Do not question me; only give me your trust—let us go away!"

"But the man—tah! It is only a fancy; why should you leave for that? Whoever it is, the infatuation grew quickly and will die out the same way—so—"

"No! If I remain I cannot answer for myself. I am ashamed to confess it, but—listen, Maman—but put your arms around me first; he is not worthy, I know it; yet I love him! He vows love to me, yet he is betrothed; I know that, also; but I have no reason left, and my folly will make me go to him if you do not help me. Listen, Maman! I—I will do all you say. I will marry in a year—two years—when this is all over. I will obey you in everything, if you will only take me away. I cannot leave you; yet I am afraid to stay where he is."

"Afraid! But, Judithe, my child, no one shall intrude upon you. Your friends will protect you from such a man. You have only to refuse to see him, and in a little while—"

"Refuse! Maman, what can I say to make you understand that I could never refuse him again? Yet, oh, the humiliation! Maman, he is the man I despised—the man I said was not fit to be spoken to; it was all true, but when I hear his voice it makes me forget his unworthiness. Listen, Maman! I—I confessed to him today that I loved him; yet I know he is the man who by the laws of America is the owner of Rhoda Larue, and he is now the betrothed of her half-sister; I heard the name of his fiancee today, and it told me the whole story. He is the man! Now, will you take me away?"

The next morning the dowager, Marquise de Caron, left her Paris home for the summer season. Her destination was indefinitely mentioned as Switzerland. Her daughter-in-law accompanied her.

And to Kenneth McVeigh, waiting impatiently the hour when he might go to her, a note was given:

"Monsieur:

"My words of yesterday had no meaning. I was frightened and irresponsible. When you read this I will have left Paris. By not meeting again we will avoid further mistakes of the same nature.

"This is my last word to you.

"JUDITHE CARON."

For two weeks he tried in vain to find her. Then he was recalled to Paris to meet his mother, who was ready for home. She was shocked at his appearance, and refused to believe that he had not been ill during her absence, and had some motherly fears regarding Parisian dissipations, from which she decided to remove him, if possible. He acknowledged he would be glad to go—he was sick of Europe any way.

The last day he took a train for Fontainbleau, remained two hours under the beeches, alone, and got back to Paris in time to make the train for Havre.

After they had got comfortably established on a homeward-bound vessel, and he was watching the land line grow fainter over the waters, Mrs. McVeigh came to him with a bit of news read from the last journal brought aboard.

The dowager, Marquise de Caron, had established herself at Geneva for the season, accompanied by her daughter, the present Marquise, whose engagement to Monsieur Loris Dumaresque had just been announced.



CHAPTER X.

Long before the first gun had been fired at Fort Sumter, Madame la Marquise was able to laugh over that summer-time madness of hers, and ridicule herself for the wasted force of that infatuation.

She was no longer a recluse unacquainted with men. The prophecy of Madame, the dowager, that if left alone she would return to the convent, had not been verified. The death of the dowager occurred their first winter in Paris, after Geneva, and the Marquise had not yet shown a predilection for nunneries.

She had seen the world, and it pleased her well enough; indeed, the portion of the world she came in contact with did its best to please her, and with a certain feverish eagerness she went half way to meet it.

People called her a coquette—the most dangerous of coquettes, because she was not a cold one. She was responsive and keenly interested up to the point where admirers declared themselves, and proposals of marriage followed; after that, every man was just like every other one! Yet she was possessed of an idea that somewhere there existed a hitherto undiscovered specimen who could discuss the emotions and the philosophies in delightful sympathy, and restrain the expression of his own personal emotions to tones and glances, those indefinite suggestions that thrill yet call for no open reproof—no reversal of friendship.

So, that was the man she was seeking in the multitudes—and on the way there were surely amusements to be found!

Dumaresque remonstrated. She defended herself with the avowal that she was only avenging weaker womanhood, smiled at, won, and forgotten, as his sex were fond of forgetting.

"But we expect better things of women," he declared warmly; "not a deliberate intention of playing with hearts to see how many can be hurt in a season. Judithe, you are no longer the same woman. Where is the justice you used to gauge every one by? Where the mercy to others weaker than yourself?"

"Gone!" she laughed lightly; "driven away in self-defense! I have had to put mercy aside lest it prove my master. The only safeguard against being too warm to all may be to be cool to all. You perceive that would never—never do. So—!"

"End all this unsatisfied, feverish life by marrying me," he pleaded. "I will take you from Paris. With all your social success you have never been happy here; we will travel. You promised, Judithe, and—"

"Chut! Loris; you are growing ungallant. You should never remember a woman's promise after she has forgotten it. We were betrothed—yes. But did I not assure you I might never marry? Maman was made happy for a little while by the fancy; but now?—well, matrimony is no more appealing to me than it ever was, and you would not want an indifferent wife. I like you, you best of all those men you champion, but I love none of you! Not that I am lacking in affection, but rather, incapable of concentrating it on one object."

"Once, it was not so; I have not forgotten the episode of Fontainbleu."

"That? Pouf! I have learned things since then, Loris. I have learned that once, at least, in every life love seems to have been born on earth for the first time; happy those whom it does not visit too late! Well! I, also, had to have my little experience; it had to be some one; so it was that stranger. But I have outgrown all that; we always outgrow those things, do we not? I compare him now with the men I have known since, and he shrinks, he dwindles! I care only for intellectual men, and the artistic temperament. He had neither. Yes, it is true; the girlish fancies appear ridiculous in so short a time."

Dumaresque agreed that it was true of any fancy, to one of fickle nature.

"No, it is not fickleness," she insisted. "Have you no boyish loves of the past hidden away, each in their separate nook of memory? Confess! Are you and the world any the worse for them? Certainly not. They each contributed a certain amount towards the education of the emotions. Well; is my education to be neglected because you fear I shall injure the daintily-bound books in the human library? I shall not, Loris. I only flutter the leaves a little and glance at the pictures they offer, but I never covet one of them for my own, and never read one to the finale, hence—"

Dumaresque left soon after for an extended artistic pilgrimage into northern Africa, and people began to understand that there would be no wedding. The engagement had only been made to comfort the dowager.

Judithe de Caron regretted his departure more than she had regretted anything since the death of the woman who had been a mother to her. There was no one else with whom she could be so candid—no man who inspired her with the same confidence. She compared him with the American, and told herself how vastly her friend was the superior.

Had McVeigh been one of the scholarly soldiers of Europe, such as she had since known—men of breadth and learning, she could have understood her own infatuation. But he was certainly provincial, and not at all learned. She had met many cadets since, and had studied them. They knew their military tactics—the lessons of their schools. They flirted with the grissettes, and took on airs; they drank and had pride in emptying more glasses and walking straighter afterwards than their comrades. They were very good fellows, but heavens! how shallow they were! So he must have been. She tried to remember a single sentence uttered by him containing wisdom of any sort whatever—there had not been one. His silences had been links to bind her to him. His glances had been revelations, and his words had been only: "I adore you."

So many men had said the same thing since. It seemed always the sort of thing men said when conversation flagged. But in those earlier days she had not known that, hence the fact that she—well, she knew now!

Twice she had met that one-time bondwoman, Kora, and the meeting left her thoughtful, and not entirely satisfied with herself.

How wise she could be in advice to that pretty butterfly! How plainly she could work out a useful life to be followed by—some one else!

Her more thoughtful moods demanded: Why not herself? Her charities of the street, her subscriptions to worthy funds, her patronage of admirable institutions, all these meant nothing. Dozens of fashionables and would-be fashionables did the same. It was expected of them. Those charities opened a door through which many entered the inner circles.

She had fitful desires to do the things people did not expect. She detested the shams of life around her in that inner circle. She felt at times she would like to get them all under her feet—trample them down and make room for something better; but for what? She did not know. She was twenty-one, wealthy, her own mistress, and was tired of it all. When she drove past laughing Kora on the avenue she was more tired of it than ever.

"How am I better than she but by accident?" she asked herself. "She amuses herself—poor little bondslave, who has only changed masters! I amuse myself (without a master, it is true, and more elegantly, perhaps), but with as little usefulness to the world."

She felt ashamed when she thought of Alain and his mother, who seemed to have lived only to help others. They had given over the power to her, and how poorly she had acquitted herself!

Once—when she first came with the dowager to Paris—the days had been all too short for her plans and dreams of usefulness; how long ago that seemed.

Now, she knew that the owner of wealth is the victim of multitudinous schemes of the mendicant, whether of the street corner or the fashionable missions. She had lost faith in the efficacy of alms. No cause came to her with force enough to re-awaken her enthusiasms. Everything was so tame—so old!

One day she read in a journal that the usefulness of Kora as a dancer was over. There had been an accident at the theatre, her foot was smashed; not badly enough to call for amputation, but too much for her ever to dance again.

The Marquise wondered if the fair-weather friends would desert her now. She had heard of Trouvelot, an exquisite who followed the fashions in everything, and Kora had succeeded in being the fashion for two seasons. She was just as pretty, no doubt—just as adorable, but—

As the weeks of that winter went by rumors from the Western world were thick with threats of strife. State after State had seceded. The South was marshalling her forces, training her men, urging the necessity of defending State rights and maintaining their power to govern a portion as ably as they had the whole of the United States during the eighty years of its governmental life. The North, with its factories, its foreign commerce, and its manifold requirements, had bred the politicians of the country. But the South, with its vast agricultural States, its wealth, and its traditions of landed ancestry, had produced the orators—the statesman—the men who had shone most brilliantly in the pages of their national history.

From the shores of France one could watch some pretty moves in the games evolving about that promise of civil war; the creeping forward of England to help widen the breach between the divided sections, and the swift swinging of Russian war vessels into the harbors of the Atlantic—the silent bear of the Russias facing her hereditary English foe and forbidding interference, until the lion gave way with low growlings, not daring to even roar his chagrin, but contenting himself with night-prowlings during the four years that followed.

All those wheels within wheels were discussed around the Marquise de Caron in those days. Her acquaintance with the representatives of different nations and the diplomats of her own, made her aware of many unpublished moves for advantage in the game they surveyed. The discussion of them, and guesses as to the finale, helped to awake her from the lethargy she had deplored. Remembering that the McVeighs belonged to a seceding state, she asked many questions and forgot none of the replies.

"Madame La Marquise, I was right," said a white moustached general one night at a great ball, where she appeared. "Was it not a rose you wagered me? I have won. War is declared in America. In South Carolina, today, the Confederates won the first point, and secured a Federal fort."

"General! they have not dared!"

"Madame, those Southerons are daring above everything. I have met them. Their men are fighters, and they will be well officered."

Well officered! She thought of Kenneth McVeigh, he would be one of them; yes, she supposed that was one thing he could do—fight; a thing requiring brute strength, brute courage!

"So!" said the Countess Biron, who seldom was acquainted with the causes of any wars outside those of court circles, "this means that if the Northern States should retaliate and conquer, all the slaves would be free?"

"Not at all, Countess. The North does not interfere with slavery where it exists, only protests against its extension to greater territory."

"Oh! Well; I understood it had something to do with the Africans. That clever young Delaven devoted an entire hour to my enlightenment yesterday. And my poor friend, Madame McVeigh, you remember her, Judithe? She is in the Carolinas. I tremble to think of her position now; an army of slaves surrounding them, and, of course, only awaiting the opportunity for insurrection."

"And Louisiana seceded two months ago," said the Marquise, and then smiled. "You will think me a mercenary creature," she declared, "but I have property in New Orleans which I have never seen, and I am wondering whether its value will rise or fall because of the proposed change of government."

"You have never seen it?"

"No; it was a purchase made by my husband from some home-sick relative, who had thought to remain there, but could not live away from France. I have promised myself to visit it some day. It would be exceedingly difficult to do so now, I suppose, but how much more spirited a journey it would be; for each side will have vessels on guard all along the coast, will they not?"

"There will at least be enough to deter most ladies from taking adventurous pilgrimages in that direction. I shall not advise you to go unless under military escort, Marquise."

"I shall notify you, General, when my preparations are made; in the meantime here is your rose; and would not my new yacht do for the journey?"

So, jesting and questioning, she accepted his arm and made the circle of the rooms. Everywhere they heard fragments of the same topic. Americans were there from both sections. She saw a pretty woman from Alabama nod and smile, but put her hands behind her when a hitherto friendly New Yorker gave her greeting.

"We women can't do much to help," she declared, in those soft tones of the South, "but we can encourage our boys by being pronounced in our sympathies. I certainly shall not shake hands with a Northerner who may march with the enemy against our men; how can I?"

"Suppose we talk it over and try to find a way," he suggested. Then they both smiled and passed on together. Judithe de Caron found herself watching them with a little ache in her heart. She could see they were almost, if not quite, lovers; yet all their hopes were centered on opposite victories. How many—many such cases there must be!

* * * * *

Before spring had merged into summer, a lady, veiled, and giving no name, was announced to the Marquise. Rather surprised at the mysterious call, she entered the reception room, and was again surprised when the lifted veil disclosed the handsome face of the octoroon, Kora.

She had lost some of her brilliant color, and her expression was more settled, it had less of the butterfly brightness.

"You see, Madame, I have at last taken you at your word."

The Marquise, who was carefully noting the alteration in her, bowed, but made no remark. The face of the octoroon showed uncertainty.

"Perhaps—perhaps I have waited too long," she said, and half rose.

"No, no; you did right to come. I expected you—yes, really! Now be seated and tell me what it is."

"First, that you were a prophetess, Madame," and the full lips smiled without merriment. "I am left alone, now that I have neither money nor the attraction for the others. He only followed the crowd—to me, and away from me!"

"Well?"

"Well, it is not about that I come! But, Madame, I am going to America; not to teach, as you advised, but I see now a way in which I can really help."

"Help whom?"

Her visitor regarded her with astonishment; was it possible that she, the woman whose words had aroused the first pride of race in her, the first thought of her people unlinked with shame! That she had so soon forgotten? Had she remembered the pupil, but failed to recall the lesson taught?

"You have probably forgotten the one brief conversation with which you honored me, Madame. But I mean the people we discussed then—my people."

"You mean the colored people."

"Certainly, Madame."

"But you are more white than colored."

"Oh, yes; that is true, but the white blood would not count in America if it were known there was one drop of black blood in my mother. But no one need know it; I go from France, I will speak only French, and if you would only help me a little."

She grew prettier in her eagerness, and her eyes brightened. The Marquise smiled at the change enthusiasm made.

"You must tell me the object for which you go."

"It is the war, Madame; in time this war must free the colored folks; it is talked of already; it is said the North will put colored soldiers in the field; that will be the little, thin edge of the wedge, and if I could only get there, if you would help me to some position, or a recommendation to people in New Orleans; any way so that people would not ask questions or be curious about me—if you would only do that madame!"

"But what will you do when there?"

The girl glanced about the room and spoke more softly.

"I am trusting you, Madame, without asking who you side with in our war, but even if you are against us I—I trust you! They tell me the South is the strongest. They have been getting ready for this a long time. The North will need agents in the South. I have learned some things here—people talk so much. I am going to Washington. From there I will go south. No one will know me in New Orleans. I will change my name, and I promise not to bring discredit on any recommendation you may give me."