ike verbena, Lucy?"

He laid the verbena and geranium on her lap, and she took them up
mechanically.

"I do not like spies," she said, in a dreamy tone. "In India they have
been known to watch the inmates of a house in the evening, and to
bow-string one of those they were watching before the morning. You are
laughing! Indeed, my nurse used to tell me tales of it."

"We have no spies in England--in that sense, Lucy. When I used the word
spy, it was with no meaning attached to it. It is not impossible but it
may be a sweetheart of one of the maid-servants, come up from Deerham
for a rendezvous. Be under no apprehension."

At that moment, the voice of his wife came ringing through the room.
"Mr. Verner!"

He turned to the call. Waiting to say another word to Lucy, as a thought
struck him. "You would prefer not to remain at the window, perhaps. Let
me take you to a more sheltered seat."

"Oh, no, thank you," she answered impulsively. "I like being at the
window. It is not of myself that I am thinking." And Lionel moved away.

"Is it not true that the fountains at Versailles played expressly for
me?" eagerly asked Sibylla, as he approached her. "Sir Rufus won't
believe that they did. The first time we were in Paris, you know."

Sir Rufus Hautley was by her side then. He looked at Lionel. "They never
play for private individuals, Mr. Verner. At least, if they do, things
have changed."

"My wife thought they did," returned Lionel, with a smile. "It was all
the same."

"They did, Lionel, you know they did," vehemently asserted Sibylla. "De
Coigny told me so; and he held authority in the Government."

"I know that De Coigny told you so, and that you believed him," answered
Lionel, still smiling. "I did not believe him."

Sibylla turned her head away petulantly from her husband. "You are
saying it to annoy me. I'll never appeal to you again. Sir Rufus, they
did play expressly for me."

"It may be bad taste, but I'd rather see the waterworks at St. Cloud
than at Versailles," observed a Mr. Gordon, some acquaintance that they
had picked up in town, and to whom it had been Sibylla's pleasure to
give an invitation. "Cannonby wrote me word last week from Paris----"

"Who?" sharply interrupted Sibylla.

Mr. Gordon looked surprised. Her tone had betrayed something of eager
alarm, not to say terror.

"Captain Cannonby, Mrs. Verner. A friend of mine just returned from
Australia. Business took him to Paris as soon as he