red in her throat:

"You're as gay as a chaffinch, Garcon Carterette." Garcon Carterette!
Instantly Carterette sobered down. No one save Ranulph ever called her
Garcon Carterette. Guida used Ranulph's name for Carterette, knowing
that it would change the madcap's mood. Carterette, to hide a sudden
flush, stooped and slowly put on her slipper. Then she came back to the
veille, and sat down again beside Guida, saying as she did so:

"Yes, I'm gay as a chaffinch--me."

She unfolded the letter slowly, and Guida stopped sewing, but
mechanically began to prick the linen lying on her knee with the point
of the needle.

"Well," said Carterette deliberately, "this letter's from a pend'loque
of a fellow--at least, we used to call him that--though if you come to
think, he was always polite as mended porringer. Often he hadn't two
sous to rub against each other. And--and not enough buttons for his
clothes."

Guida smiled. She guessed whom Carterette meant. "Has Monsieur Detricand
more buttons now?" she asked with a little whimsical lift of the
eyebrows.

"Ah bidemme, yes, and gold too, all over him--like that!" She made a
quick sweeping gesture which would seem to make Detricand a very spangle
of buttons. "Come, what do you think--he's a general now.

"A general!" Instantly Guida thought of Philip and a kind of envy shot
into her heart that this idler Detricand should mount so high in a few
months--a man whose past had held nothing to warrant such success. "A
general--where?" she asked.

"In the Vendee army, fighting for the new King of France--you know the
rebels cut off the last King's head."

At another time Guida's heart would have throbbed with elation, for
the romance of that Vendee union of aristocrat and peasant fired her
imagination; but she only said in the tongue of the people: "Ma fuifre,
yes, I know!"

Carterette was delighted to thus dole out her news, and get due reward
of astonishment. "And he's another name," she added. "At least it's not
another, he always had it, but he didn't call himself by it. Pardi, he's
more than the Chevalier; he's the Comte Detricand de Tournay--ah, then,
believe me if you choose, there it is!"

She pointed to the signature of the letter, and with a gush of eloquence
explained how it all was about Detricand the vaurien and Detricand the
Comte de Tournay.

"Good riddance to Monsieur Savary dit Detricand, and good welcome to
the Comte de Tournay," answered Guida, trying hard