urprise and thrill than any woman he had met before. "Wisdom
wanting absolute honesty," he told himself, "is only craft: I discover
that a monstrous deal of cleverness I have seen in her sex is only
another kind of cosmetic daubed on with a sponge."

And then, too, Olivia that morning seemed to have become all of a sudden
very cold to him. He was piqued at her silence, he was more than piqued
to discover that she too, like Mungo, obviously considered his removal a
relief.

Behold him, then, with his quarters taken in the Boar's Head Inn, whence
by good luck the legal gang of Edinburgh had some hours before departed,
standing in the entrance feeling himself more the foreigner than ever,
with the vexing reflection that he had not made any progress in the
object of his embassy, but, on the contrary, had lost no little degree
of his zest therein.

The sound of the flageolet was at once a blow and a salute. That
unaccomplished air had helped to woo Olivia in her bower, but yet it
gave a link with her, the solace of the thought that here was one she
knew. Was it not something of good fortune that it should lead him to
identify and meet one whose very name was still unknown to him, but with
whom he was, in a faint measure, on slight terms of confederacy through
the confession of Olivia and the confidence of Mungo Boyd?

"_Toujours l'audace!_" thought he, and he asked for the innkeeper's
introduction to the performer. "If it may be permitted, and the
gentleman is not too pressingly engaged."

"Indeed," said the innkeeper--a jovial rosy gentleman, typical of his
kind--"indeed, and it may very well be permitted, and it would not be
altogether to my disadvantage that his lordship should be out of there,
for the Bailies cannot very well be drinking deep and listening to Mr.
Simon MacTag-gart's songs, as I have experienced afore. The name?"

"He never heard it," said Count Victor, "but it happens to be
Montaiglon, and I was till this moment in the odd position of not
knowing his, though we have a common friend."

A few minutes later the Chamberlain stood before him with the end of the
flageolet protruding from the breast of his coat.

As they met in the narrow confine of the lobby--on either hand of them
closed rooms noisy with clink of drinking-ware, with laugh and jest and
all that rumour of carouse--Montaiglon's first impression was exceeding
favourable. This Chamberlain pleased his eye to start with; his manner
was fine