se
forgive me if you can!"

"It is nothing," she said, in a low voice, and after a moment she looked
up for the swiftest possible glance and down again. "That is my--aunt,"
she said. "Only--please let us talk about something else! Of course you
couldn't possibly have known."

"No," said Ste. Marie, gravely. "No, of course. You are very good to
forgive me."

He was silent a little while, for what the girl had told him surprised
him very much indeed, and touched him, too. He remembered again the
remark of his friend when O'Hara had passed them on the boulevard:

"There goes some of the best blood that ever came out of Ireland. See
what it has fallen to!"

"It is a curious fact," said he, "that you and I are very close
compatriots in the matter of blood--if 'compatriots' is the word. You
are Irish and Spanish. My mother was Irish and my people were Bearnais,
which is about as much Spanish as French; and, indeed, there was a great
deal of blood from across the mountains in them, for they often married
Spanish wives."

He pulled the _Bayard_ out of his pocket.

"The Ste. Marie in here married a Spanish lady, didn't he?"

The girl looked up to him once more.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I remember. He was a brave man, Monsieur. He had
a great soul. And he died nobly."

"Well, as for that," he said, flushing a little, "the Ste. Maries have
all died rather well."

He gave a short laugh.

"Though I must admit," said he, "that the last of them came precious
near falling below the family standard a week ago. I should think that
probably none of my respected forefathers was killed in climbing over a
garden-wall. Autres temps, autres moeurs."

He burst out laughing again at what seemed to him rather comic, but
Mlle. O'Hara did not smile. She looked very gravely into his eyes, and
there seemed to be something like sorrow in her look. Ste. Marie
wondered at it, but after a moment it occurred to him that he was very
near forbidden ground, and that doubtless the girl was trying to give
him a silent warning of it. He began to turn over the leaves of the book
in his hand.

"You have marked a great many pages here," said he.

And she said: "It is my best of all books. I read in it very often. I am
so thankful for it that there are no words to say how thankful I am--how
glad I am that I have such a world as that to--take refuge in sometimes
when this world is a little too unbearable. It does for me now what the
fairy stories