in my honour--wasn't it, Sonia?" And
she walked to the window, and, turning her back on them, stared out of
it.

"She HAS got her mouth full of that At Home," said Jeanne to Marie in a
low voice.

There was an awkward silence. Marie broke it:

"Speaking of Madame de Relzieres, do you know that she is on pins and
needles with anxiety? Her son is fighting a duel to-day," she said.

"With whom?" said Sonia.

"No one knows. She got hold of a letter from the seconds," said Marie.

"My mind is quite at rest about Relzieres," said Germaine. "He's a
first-class swordsman. No one could beat him."

Sonia did not seem to share her freedom from anxiety. Her forehead was
puckered in little lines of perplexity, as if she were puzzling out
some problem; and there was a look of something very like fear in her
gentle eyes.

"Wasn't Relzieres a great friend of your fiance at one time?" said
Jeanne.

"A great friend? I should think he was," said Germaine. "Why, it was
through Relzieres that we got to know Jacques."

"Where was that?" said Marie.

"Here--in this very chateau," said Germaine.

"Actually in his own house?" said Marie, in some surprise.

"Yes; actually here. Isn't life funny?" said Germaine. "If, a few
months after his father's death, Jacques had not found himself hard-up,
and obliged to dispose of this chateau, to raise the money for his
expedition to the South Pole; and if papa and I had not wanted an
historic chateau; and lastly, if papa had not suffered from rheumatism,
I should not be calling myself in a month from now the Duchess of
Charmerace."

"Now what on earth has your father's rheumatism got to do with your
being Duchess of Charmerace?" cried Jeanne.

"Everything," said Germaine. "Papa was afraid that this chateau was
damp. To prove to papa that he had nothing to fear, Jacques, en grand
seigneur, offered him his hospitality, here, at Charmerace, for three
weeks."

"That was truly ducal," said Marie.

"But he is always like that," said Sonia.

"Oh, he's all right in that way, little as he cares about society,"
said Germaine. "Well, by a miracle my father got cured of his
rheumatism here. Jacques fell in love with me; papa made up his mind to
buy the chateau; and I demanded the hand of Jacques in marriage."

"You did? But you were only sixteen then," said Marie, with some
surprise.

"Yes; but even at sixteen a girl ought to know that a duke is a duke. I
did," said Germaine. "Then since J