lish, for had not M. le Comte been obliged to fly before
the fury of the Terrorists, whose dreaded Committee of Public Safety had
already arrested him as a "suspect" and condemned him to the guillotine.
He had contrived to escape death by what was nothing short of a miracle,
and he had lived for twenty years in England, and there had married a
beautiful English girl from whom Mademoiselle Crystal had inherited the
deep blue eyes and brilliant skin which were the greatest charm of her
effulgent beauty.

I like to think of her just as she was on that memorable day early in
March of the year 1815--just as she sat that morning on a low stool
close to Mme. la Duchesse's high-backed chair, and with her eyes fixed
so enquiringly upon Madame's kind old face. Her fair hair was done up in
the quaint loops and curls which characterised the mode of the moment:
she had on a white dress cut low at the neck and had wrapped a soft
cashmere shawl round her shoulders, for the weather was cold and there
was no fire in the stately open hearth.

Having presumably arrived at the happy conclusion that Madame's wrath
was only on the surface, Crystal now said gently:

"Father loves all this etiquette, _ma tante_; it brings back memories of
a very happy past. It is the only thing he has left now," she added with
a little sigh, "the only bit out of the past which that awful revolution
could not take away from him. You will try to be indulgent to him, aunt
darling, won't you?"

"Indulgent?" retorted the old lady with a shrug of her shoulders, "of
course I'll be indulgent. It's no affair of mine and he does as he
pleases. But I should have thought that twenty years spent in England
would have taught him commonsense, and twenty years' experience in
earning a precarious livelihood as a teacher of languages in . . ."

"Hush, aunt, for pity's sake," broke in Crystal hurriedly, and she put
up her hands almost as if she wished to stop the words in the old lady's
mouth.

"All right! all right! I won't mention it again," said Mme. la Duchesse
good-humouredly. "I have only been in this house four and twenty hours,
my dear child, but I have already learned my lesson. I know that the
memory of the past twenty years must be blotted right out of our
minds--out of the minds of every one of us. . . ."

"Not of mine, aunt, altogether," murmured Crystal softly.

"No, my dear--not altogether," rejoined Mme. la Duchesse as she placed
one of her fine white ha