her weight upon his thigh, and, feeling cautiously with his foot, found her stirrup and kicked it free. He pulled up slowly, and, drawing aside, allowed the lady's companion to pass him at a steady gallop after the Arab.

The lady was now in a dead faint, her dark red hair hanging like a rope across de Vasselot's arm. She was, fortunately, not a big woman; for it was no easy position to find one's self in, on the top, thus, of a large horse with a senseless burden and no help in sight. He managed, however, to dismount, and rather breathlessly carried the lady to the shade of the trees, where he laid her with her head on a mound of rising turf, and, lifting aside her hair, saw her face for the first time.

Ah! That dear baroness!' he exclaimed; and, turning, he found himself bowing rather stiffly to the gentleman, who had now returned, leading the runaway horse. He was not, it may be mentioned, the baron.

While the two men were thus regarding each other in a polite silence, the baroness opened a pair of remarkably bright brown eyes, at first with wonder, and then with understanding, and finally with wonder again when they lighted on de Vasselot.

'Lory!' she cried. 'But where have you fallen from?'

It must have been from heaven, baroness,' he replied, 'for

I assuredly came at the right moment.'

He stood looking down at her-a lithe, neat, rather smallmade man. Then he turned to attend to his horse. The baroness She rose to her feet and smoothed

was already busy with her hair. her habit.

6

'Ah, good!' she laughed. There is no harm done. But you saved my life, my dear Lory. One cannot have two opinions as to that. If it were not that the colonel is watching us, I should embrace you. But I have not introduced you. This is Colonel Gilbert-my dear and good cousin, Lory de Vasselot. The colonel is from Bastia, by the way, and the Count de Vasselot pretends to be a Corsican. I mention it because it is only friendly to tell you that you have something more than the weather and my gratitude in common.'

She laughed as she spoke; then became suddenly grave, and sat down again with her hand to her eyes.

'And I am going to faint,' she added, with ghastly lips that tried to smile, and nobody but you two men.'

It is the reaction,' said Colonel Gilbert in his soothing way.

But he exchanged a quick glance with de Vasselot. baroness.'

"It will pass,

'It is well to remember at such a moment that one is a sportswoman,' suggested de Vasselot.

'And that one has de Vasselot blood in one's veins, you mean. You may as well say it.' She rose as she spoke, and looked from one to the other with a brave laugh. 'Bring me that horse,' she said.

De Vasselot conveyed by one inimitable gesture that he admired her spirit, but refused to obey her. Colonel Gilbert smiled contemplatively. He was of a different school—of that school of Frenchmen which owes its existence to Napoleon III.impassive, almost taciturn-more British than the typical Briton. De Vasselot, on the contrary, was quick and vivacious. His finecut face and dark eyes expressed a hundred things that his tongue had no time to put into words. He was hard and brown and sunburnt, which at once made him manly despite his slight frame.

'Ah,' he cried, with a gay laugh, that is better. But seriously, you know, you should have a patent stirrup

He broke off, described the patent stirrup in three gestures, how it opened and released the foot. He showed the rider falling, the horse galloping away, the released lady-rider rising to her feet and satisfying herself that no bones were broken-all in three more gestures.

Voilà!' he said; 'I shall send you one.'

'And you as poor-as poor,' said the baroness, whose husband was of the new nobility, which is based, as all the world knows, on solid manufacture. My friend, you cannot afford it.'

6

'I cannot afford to lose you,' he said with a sudden gravity, and with eyes which, to the uninitiated, would undoubtedly have conveyed the impression that she was the whole world to him. 'Besides,' he added, as an after-thought, it is only sixteen francs.'

The baroness threw up her gay brown eyes.

'Just Heaven!' she exclaimed, what it is to be able to inspire such affection-to be valued at sixteen francs!'

Then-for she was as quick and changeable as himself—she turned, and touched his arm with her thickly gloved hand.

'Seriously, my cousin, I cannot thank you, and you, Colonel Gilbert, for your promptness and your skill. And as to my stupid husband, you know, he has no words; when I tell him he will

only grunt behind his great moustache, and he will never thank you, and will never forget. Never! Remember that.' And with a wave of the riding-whip, which was attached to her wrist, she described eternity.

De Vasselot turned with a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, and busied himself with the girths of his saddle. At the touch and the sight of the buckles his eyes became grave and earnest. And it is not only Frenchmen who cherish this cult of the horse, making false gods of saddle and bridle, and a sacred temple of the harness-room. Very seriously de Vasselot shifted the side-saddle from the Arab to his own large and gentle horse--a wise old charger with a Roman nose, who never wasted his mettle in park tricks, but served honestly the Government that paid his forage.

The Baroness de Mélide watched the transaction in respectful silence, for she too took le sport very seriously, and had attended a course of lectures at a riding-school on the art of keeping and using harness. Her colour was now returning-that brilliant, delicate colour which so often accompanies dark red hair-and she gave a little sigh of resignation.

Colonel Gilbert looked at her, but said nothing. He seemed to admire her, in the same contemplative way that he had admired the moon rising behind the island of Capraja from the Place St. Nicholas in Bastia.

De Vasselot noted the sigh, and glanced sharply at her over the shoulder of the big charger.

'Of what are you thinking?' he said.

"Of the millennium, mon ami.'

'The millennium?'

'Yes,' she answered, gathering the bridle; 'when women shall perhaps be allowed to be natural. Our mothers played at being afraid-we play at being courageous.'

As she spoke she placed a neat foot in Colonel Gilbert's hand, who lifted her without effort to the saddle. De Vasselot mounted the Arab, and they rode slowly homewards by way of the Avenue de Longchamps, through the Porte Dauphine, and up that which is now the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, which was quiet enough at this time of day. The baroness was inclined to be silent. She had been more shaken than she cared to confess to two soldiers. Colonel Gilbert probably saw this, for he began to make conversation with de Vasselot.

'You do not come to Corsica,' he said.

'I have never been there-shall never go there,' answered de Vasselot. Tell me-is it not a terrible place? The end of the world, I am told. My mother' he broke off with a gesture of the utmost despair. She is dead!' he interpolated—' always told me that it was the most terrible place in the world. At my father's death, more than thirty years ago, she quitted Corsica, and came to live in Paris, where I was born, and where, if God is good, I shall die.'

'My cousin, you talk too much of death,' put in the baroness seriously.

'As between soldiers, baroness,' replied de Vasselot gaily. It is our trade. You know the island well, colonel ? '

'No, I cannot say that. But I know the Château de Vasselot.' Now, that is interesting; and I who scarcely know the address! Near Calvi, is it not? A waste of rocks, and behind each rock at least one bandit-so my dear mother assured me.'

'It might be cultivated,' answered Colonel Gilbert indifferently. 'It might be made to yield a small return. I have often thought So. I have even thought of whiling away my exile by attempting some such scheme. I once contemplated buying a piece of land on that coast to try. Perhaps you would sell?'

'Sell!' laughed de Vasselot. 'No; I am not such a scoundrel as that. I would toss you for it, my dear colonel; I would toss you for it, if you like.'

And as they turned out of the avenue into one of the palatial streets that run towards the Avenue Victor Hugo, he made the gesture of throwing a coin into the air.

CHAPTER V.

IN THE RUE DU CHERCHE-MIDI.

Il ne faut jamais se laisser trop voir, même à ceux qui nous aiment.' It was not very definitely known what Mademoiselle Brun taught in the School of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in the Rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris. For it is to be feared that Mademoiselle Brun knew nothing except the world; and it is precisely that form of knowledge which is least cultivated in a convent school.

'She has had a romance,' whispered her bright-eyed charges, and lapsed into suppressed giggles at the mere mention of such a

word in connection with a little woman dressed in rusty black, with thin grey hair, a thin grey face, and a yellow neck.

It would seem, however, that there is a point where even a mother-superior must come down, as it were, into the marketplace and meet the world. That point is where the convent purse rattles thinly and the mother-superior must face hunger. It had, in fact, been intimated to the conductors of the School of the Sisterhood of the Sacred Heart by the ladies of the quarter of St. Germain, that the convent teaching taught too little of one world and too much of another. And the mother-superior, being a sensible woman, agreed to engage a certain number of teachers from the outer world. Mademoiselle Brun was vaguely entitled an instructress, while Mademoiselle Denise Lange bore the proud title of mathematical mistress.

Mademoiselle Brun, with her compressed mouth, her wrinkled face, and her cold hazel eyes, accepted the situation, as we have to accept most situations in this world, merely because there is not choice.

'What can you teach?' asked the soft-eyed mother-superior. 'Anything,' replied Mademoiselle Brun, with a direct gaze, which somehow cowed the nun.

'She has had a romance,' whispered some wag of fourteen, when Mademoiselle Brun first appeared in the schoolroom; and that became the accepted legend regarding her.

'What are you saying of me?' she asked one day, when her rather sudden appearance caused silence at a moment when silence was not compulsory.

'That you once had a romance, mademoiselle,' answered some daring girl.

'Ah!'

And perhaps the dusky wrinkles lapsed into gentler lines, for some one had the audacity to touch mademoiselle's hand with a birdlike tap of one finger.

'And you must tell it to us.'

For there were no nuns present, and mademoiselle was suspected of having a fine contempt for the most stringent of the convent laws.

'Because the real romances are never told,' replied Mademoiselle Brun.