me quick!--before anybody else comes into the
hall!"

"Which door is it?" I asked. She showed me. It had a spring catch, and
she had stepped into the hall to see if the catch was set.

"The catch was set!" gasped Mademoiselle de Chaumont. "Break the
door--get it open--anyway--Quick!"

By good fortune I had strength enough in my shoulder to set the door
wide off its spring, and she flew to the middle of the room slamming it
in my face.

Fitness and unfitness required nicer discrimination than the crude boy
from the woods possessed. When I saw her in the ball-room she had very
little more on than when I saw her in the hall, and that little clung
tight around her figure. Yet she looked quite unconcerned.

After we had eaten supper Doctor Chantry and I sat with his sister where
we could see the dancing, on a landing of the stairway. De Chaumont's
generous house was divided across the middle by a wide hall that made an
excellent ball-room. The sides were paneled, like the walls of the room
in which I first came to my senses. Candles in sconces were reflected by
the polished, dark floor. A platform for his fiddlers had been built at
one end. Festoons of green were carried from a cluster of lights in the
center of the ceiling, to the corners, making a bower or canopy under
which the dancers moved.

It is strange to think that not one stone remains upon another and
scarcely a trace is left of this manor. When De Chaumont determined to
remove to his seat at Le Rayville, in what was then called Castorland,
he had his first hold pulled down.

Miss Chantry was a blunt woman. Her consideration for me rested on my
being her brother's pupil. She spoke more readily than he did. From our
cove we looked over the railing at an active world.

"Madame Eagle is a picture," remarked Miss Chantry. "---- Eagle! What a
name for civilized people to give a christened child! But these French
are as likely as not to call their boys Anne or Marie, and it wouldn't
surprise me if they called their girls Cat or Dog. Eagle or Crow, she is
the handsomest woman on the floor."

"Except Mademoiselle Annabel," the doctor ventured to amend.

"That Annabel de Chaumont," his sister vigorously declared, "has neither
conscience nor gratitude. But none of the French have. They will take
your best and throw you away with a laugh."

My master and I watched the brilliant figures swimming in the glow of
wax candles. Face after face could be singled out as