'selle Suzette,
she been an' dress up one o' her young ladies jes fer er trick," she
said, slowly, wiping the great drops of perspiration from her wrinkled
forehead.

"Suzette?" echoed Felice, incredulously. "She would never dare! Who
_can_ it be?"

"It is easy enough to find out," laughed Keith. "Let us go and see for
ourselves who is masquerading in my quarters."

He drew her with him as he spoke along the winding violet-bordered walks
which led to the house. She looked anxiously back over her shoulder at
her grandmother. Madame Arnault half arose, and made an imperious
gesture of dissent; but Marcelite forced her gently into her seat, and
leaning forward, whispered a few words rapidly in her ear.

"Thou art right, Marcelite," she acquiesced, with a heavy sigh. "'Tis
better so."

They spoke in _negre_, that mysterious patois which is so uncouth in
itself, so soft and caressing on the lips of women. Madame Arnault
signed to the girl to go on. She shivered a little, watching their
retreating figures. The old _bonne_ threw a light shawl about her
shoulders, and crouched affectionately at her feet. The murmur of their
voices as they talked long and earnestly together hardly reached beyond
the shadows of the wild-peach-tree beneath which they sat.

"How beautiful she was!" Felice said, musingly, as they approached the
latticed passageway.

"Well, yes," her companion returned, carelessly. "I confess I do not
greatly fancy that style of beauty myself." And he glanced significantly
down at her own flower-like face.

She flushed, and her brown eyes drooped, but a bright little smile
played about her sensitive mouth. "I cannot see," she declared, "how
Suzette could have dared to take her friends into the ballroom!"

"Why?" he asked, smiling at her vehemence.

She stopped short in her surprise. "Do you not know, then?" She sank her
voice to a whisper. "The ballroom has never been opened since the night
my mother died. I was but a baby then, though sometimes I imagine that
I remember it all. There was a grand ball there that night. La Glorieuse
was full of guests, and everybody from all the plantations around was
here. Mere has never told me how it was, nor Marcelite; but the other
servants used to talk to me about my beautiful young mother, and tell me
how she died suddenly in her ball dress, while the ball was going on. My
father had the whole wing closed at once, and no one was ever allowed to
enter it. I used to