I would," replied the
questioner, "but I know not where to find her. Where is she? She's not
at her plantation. I was up there, and she had left two days before.
She's not with the aunt here. Where is she, Monsieur?"

I listened for the answer to this question with a degree of interest.
I, too, was ignorant of the whereabouts of Eugenie, and had sought for
her that day, but in vain. It was said she had come to the city, but no
one could tell me anything of her. And I now remembered what she had
said in her letter of "_Sacre Coeur_." Perhaps, thought I, she has
really gone to the convent. Poor Eugenie!

"Ay, where is she, Monsieur?" asked another of the party.

"Very strange!" said several at once. "Where can she be? Le Ber, you
must know."

"I know nothing of the movements of Mademoiselle Besancon," answered the
young man, with an air of chagrin and surprise, too, as if he was really
ignorant upon the subject, as well as vexed by the remarks which his
companions were making.

"There's something mysterious in all this," continued one of the number.
"I should be astonished at it, if it were any one else than Eugenie
Besancon."

It is needless to say that this conversation interested me. Every word
of it fell like a spark of fire upon my heart; and I could have
strangled these fellows, one and all of them, as they stood. Little
knew they that the "young Englishman" was near, listening to them, and
as little the dire effect their words were producing.

It was not what they said of Eugenie that gave me pain. It was their
free speech about Aurore. I have not repeated their ribald talk in
relation to her--their jesting innuendoes, their base hypotheses, and
coldly brutal sneers whenever her chastity was named.

One in particular, a certain Monsieur Sevigne, was more _bizarre_ than
any of his companions; and once or twice I was upon the point of turning
upon him. It cost me an effort to restrain myself, but that effort was
successful, and I stood unmoved. Perhaps I should not have been able to
endure it much longer, but for the interposition of an event, which at
once drove these gossips and their idle talk out of my mind. That event
was _the entrance of Aurore_!

They had again commenced speaking of her--of her chastity--of her rare
charms. They were dismissing the probabilities as to who would become
possessed of her, and the _certainty_ that she would be the _maitresse_
of whoever did; they were