for some years in the colonies-I don't know where. He came home to find a wife. He had plenty of money and some brains. He saw Marguérite, and proposed for her at once to her father. Of course he was accepted, they were only too glad. He came to this house, where my dear relations were living with me-it is my house, monsieur, and not my brother's at all— and they lodged him in this very room. I never see visitors. Since my great griefs I have avoided all strangers, have lived alone, as you know, though under the same roof with those others. Well, I saw the good fat man stumping about in the garden one summer evening, looking so prosperous and contented that I felt sincerely sorry for him. Why should this poor creature die too? I said to myself. I knew very well that Marguérite's history would not be told to him, unless I told it. I made up my mind to save him, if he chose to be saved. I came to him in the night, as I come to you now. My dear monsieur, I terrified that poor sheep so utterly out of his senses that he fled from Maupas the next morning, and wrote from Paris to my brother to say that he had changed his mind about marrying. Heavens, how I laughed when the Baron came to me with the letter in his hand!'

Frank listened with the deepest attention to all this. The history of M. de la Masselière seemed to do him good; for when it was finished he was smiling quite comfortably.

'Well?' said Madame de Maupas, looking at him hard.

'Madame?'

"Well, have you been listening? Do you understand me?'

'I have listened to every word; but you must excuse me if I cannot feel sure of your object.'

'My object! I had no idea

Englishmen were so dall. To save you, of course, as I saved Grégoire de la Masselière.'

'You really hope, madame, to find me such a dastardly coward as M. de la Masselière-that poor sheep, as you justly call him? Englishmen are dull, no doubt. They don't understand being expected to behave dishonourably.'

'Ah, indeed! Then you will not give up my niece?'

‘Literally, madame, I will die first.'

Frank coloured scarlet, and spoke with almost sublime energy. Afterwards he was half-amused, half-grieved at himself, for having flown out in this manner to a poor old mad woman. Madame de Maupas seemed deeply impressed. She got up, trembling a little, and leaning on her stick.

Very well. Please yourself. I do not wish to see you again. You are very ungrateful, and no doubt there is a bitter punishment in store for you. You also will die, and your death will break the girl's heart. I understand that she cares for you more than for any of them. I wish you goodevening.'

She departed by the way she had come through the dressingroom, and so into a narrow passage, which led to her own part of the house. Frank opened the doors for her, and shut and locked them securely when she was gone. He then returned to his chair before the red smouldering fire, to muse over the strange explanation of his Marguérite's sadness.

IV.

ALBERT kept his word, and the next day after breakfast Frank found himself left alone in the salon with Marguérite. He poured

out his feelings with the demonstrative candour natural to him, which did not seem to offend this French lady. Her English lover seemed to her a charming and wonderful creature; perhaps a little wild and unmanageable, but still a creature with whom one could be amazingly happy-if only things would go well. The shadow of the past still clouded her eyes and saddened her smile. Could any mortal man be master of Fate? Certainly, if any one, Frank Morley.

'I know you think me very sad and stupid,' she said by and by. 'Believe me, I have had a good deal to make me so. Only take care of yourself, and I shall forget it all presently.'

'Am I in any danger, then?' said Frank.

"O no; not any real danger! But I think we are an unlucky family. Perhaps some day I may be able to tell you why.'

Tell me now, can't you? But in the mean time you need hardly wear mourning for me in prospect, Marguérite. I have not the smallest intention of dying at present.'

He was twining one of her black ribbons round his fingers as he spoke.

'Ab,' she said, with almost a little cry, I ought never to have allowed it. I ought never to have said yes. I ought to have cared more-ah, Frank, I have been selfish, and selfishness is sure to be punished.'

'Nonsense! What are you afraid of?' said Frank, gazing earnestly into her face. She shook her head, and looked down. Then she lifted her eyes again with a little air of proud resolution.

'I will tell you,' she said, 'and then you will be warned, perhaps, and go away. You ought to have known it all before; you have been deceived. We have all joined

in deceiving you. At first I did not think what I was doing, but now I know. Frank, I thought it would be easier to die than to tell you all the story; but now I will, for you are giving yourself ignorantly. And I will not have it; you are too dear and generous.'

Frank smiled as he listened and watched her face.

I think you are disturbing yourself about nothing, my dear child,' he said.

Indeed I am not. Ah, you would not say that if you knew what pain it is to me, how all the old pain comes back! Only this is fifty thousand times worse, because I do believe-'

That you love me, and I love you.' Frank finished her speech for her. I should say that made it fifty thousand times better. It strikes me you don't quite understand the force of what you are saying. Under those circumstances is it likely that I should give you up, whatever you might have to tell me? Listen. You are like some princess in a fairy tale, who put all her lovers to death if they couldn't answer a certain question: What is my thought like? Don't you know? Well, lots of them came to an untimely end, but at last the right man came and answered it. He always does. Your question was different. You asked it me one morning as you went out of that door, and would not stop to hear the answer, because you knew it would be the right So altogether I don't see what there is to vex yourself about.'

one.

Frank spoke very deliberately, with a cool reasoning air. A look of great surprise came into Marguérite's face; she flushed up as she had done that morning, which both she and Frank remembered so well.

'You say very strange things,'

she murmured, after a little silence.

Is there anything quite untrue and ridiculous in what I have said?'

'O Frank, you puzzle me completely.'

'You see, you need not trouble yourself to tell me anything, my dear Marguerite. And as for pain, old or new, don't mention the subject again, please. You are going to be happy, and you will oblige me by taking off these horrid black ribbons.'

You know, and it

Frank! makes no difference?'

'It makes this difference-that I will not wait for you more than a month. I am not going to let you stay in this gloomy place, with ghosts and mad people, a day longer than I can help.'

Ah, mon Dieu! It was my aunt; you have seen her! When was it? What did she say to you?'

She was very much agitated. Frank soothed her as well as he could, and told her by degrees the story of his visit from Madame de Maupas. Marguérite cried a little, and could hardly believe that he was uninfluenced by all the horrors he had heard. Frank had to soothe and reassure her all over again. By and by she looked up at him, her eyes smiling, the wild weary look in them gone for ever.

'I am happy now,' she said. 'I feel the sunshine; there is no more cold wind;' and she broke into a little joyful laugh. After all, this is a very good world,' she said.

V.

FRANK afterwards described his interview with Madame de Maupas in a much more unvarnished way to her nephew Albert, who

told him that all her story was true. He added that the poor lady, always peculiar, had been a little touched in her wits since the war and the death of her sons. She had become superstitious and revengeful, throwing all the blame of their deaths on the ill-luck of Marguérite. Her late husband's brother, the present Comte de Maupas, was a thorough Parisian, and had no use for such a middle-age abode as the Château de Maupas. He was glad that the Saint-Flors should make their home there, and take charge of the old lady; and having no children of his own, he meant to leave the place to Albert, with the small quantity of land that remained to it.

It seemed only right that Frank should know all the family history, the chain of circumstances which had led to his meeting with Marguérite. It was a rough way by which he had reached her, certainly of battlefields and dying men, accidents and terrors, the derangement of one person, the cowardice and superstition of another. Trains running into snowdrifts, a struggle with the elements, a ghostly old castle blocked in with snow. Through all these difficulties the fair sorrowful Frenchwoman and the sturdy Englishman had advanced to meet each other, and now Frank was resolved that Marguérite should forget the past dimness of her life in its present beauty and brightness.

He took a fine house at Bordeaux and furnished it splendidly for his bride. He brought her there in the spring, dressed all in lovely rose-pink, which made her complexion look like driven snow, and her eyes of a deeper and more wonderful blue than ever. Albert, when he visited them, hardly knew his sister; she looked so pretty and happy and young.

Madame Morley, née de Saint

Flor, gives the most charming parties, and is already known as the most agreeable hostess in that part of France. With Frank's help she has introduced something in imitation of an English gardenparty, which was very popular this summer. There a few of the more advanced young married ladies might be seen playing at lawntennis, a game in which Marguérite herself, much as she liked to watch her husband playing it, could never be persuaded to join. Still people said she was entirely English. What could be more English than her marriage! It was evident that she and Frank Morley adored each other; and there was even a floating rumour that they had arranged it all between themselves, before M. de Saint

Flor heard a word about it. That, however, was pronounced incredible. There is no limit to the extravagances of gossip.

The last night that Frank spent at Château Maupas, he found on his table a case of diamond ornaments, with a note addressed to himself, written in so thin and shaky a hand that he could hardly decipher it.

'I give these to you, that you may give them to your Marguérite. I will not see her; but I congratulate her on her marriage with a brave man who loves her, and will teach her how to live.

'COMTESSE DRE. DE MAUPAS.'

Frank thought there was some method in the old lady's madness, after all.

'Ir air strange, it air,' he was saying as I opened the door of the room where our social little semiliterary society met; but I could tell you queerer things than that 'ere-almighty queer things. You can't learn everything out of books, sirs, nohow. You see it ain't the men as can string English together and as has had good eddications as finds themselves in the queer places I've been in. They're mostly rough men, sirs, as can scarce speak aright, far less tell with pen and ink the things they've seen; but if they could they'd make some of your European's har riz with astonishment. They would, sirs, They would, sirs, you bet!'

His name was Jefferson Adams, I believe; I know his initials were J. A., for you may see them yet deeply whittled on the right-hand upper panel of our smoking-room door. He left us this legacy, and also some artistic patterns done in tobacco juice upon our Turkey carpet; but beyond these reminiscences our American storyteller has vanished from our ken. He gleamed across our ordinary quiet conviviality like some brilliant meteor, and then was lost in the outer darkness. That night, how ever, our Nevada friend was in full swing; and I quietly lit my pipe and dropped into the nearest chair, anxious not to interrupt his story.

Mind you,' he continued, I hain't got no grudge against your men of science. I likes and respects a chap as can match every beast and plant, from a huckleberry to a grizzly with a jaw-breakin' name; but if you wants real interestin' facts, something a bit juicy, you go to your whalers and your frontiersmen, and your scouts

and Hudson Bay men, chaps who mostly can scarce sign their names.'

There was a pause here, as Mr. Jefferson Adams produced a long cheroot and lit it. We preserved a strict silence in the room, for we had already learned that on the slightest interruption our Yankee drew himself into his shell again. He glanced round with a self-satisfied smile as he remarked our expectant looks, and continued through a halo of smoke,

Now which of you gentlemen has ever been in Arizona? None, I'll warrant. And of all English or Americans as can put pen to paper, how many has been in Arizona? Precious few, I calc'late. I've been there, sirs, lived there for years; and when I think of what I've seen there, why, I can scarce get myself to believe it now.

'Ah, there's a country! I was one of Walker's filibusters, as they chose to call us; and after we'd busted up, and the chief was shot, some on us made tracks and located down there. A reg'lar English and American colony, we was, with our wives and children, and all complete. I reckon there's some of the old folk there yet, and that they hain't forgotten what I'm agoing to tell you. No, I warrant they hain't, never on this side of the grave, sirs.

'I was talking about the country, though; and I guess I could astonish you considerable if I spoke of nothing else. To think of such a land being built for a few "Greasers" and half-breeds! It's a misusing of the gifts of Providence, that's what I calls it. Grass as hung over a chap's head as he rode through it, and trees so thick that you couldn't