young and beautiful girl was
shut up a prisoner, condemned perhaps to a life-long captivity.

"Good God!" He leaped to his feet at the thought. He would go and
thunder at Madame Arnault's door, and demand an explanation. But no; not
yet. He calmed himself with an effort. By too great haste he might
injure her. "Insane?" He laughed aloud at the idea of madness in
connection with that exquisite creature.

It dawned upon him, as he paced restlessly back and forth, that although
his father had been here more than once in his youth and manhood, he had
never heard him speak of La Glorieuse nor of Felix Arnault, whose
letters he had read after his father's death a few months ago--those old
letters whose affectionate warmth indeed had determined him, in the
first desolation of his loss, to seek the family which seemed to have
been so bound to his own. Morose and taciturn as his father had been,
surely he would sometimes have spoken of his old friend if--Worn out at
last with conjecture; beaten back, bruised and breathless, from an
enigma which he could not solve; exhausted by listening with strained
attention for some movement in the next room, he threw himself on his
bed, dressed as he was, and fell into a heavy sleep, which lasted far
into the forenoon of the next day.

When he came out (walking like one in a dream), he found a gay party
assembled on the lawn in front of the house. Suzette Beauvais and her
guests, a bevy of girls, had come from Grandchamp. They had been joined,
as they rowed down the bayou, by the young people from the plantation
houses on the way. Half a dozen boats, their long paddles laid across
the seats, were added to the home fleet at the landing. Their stalwart
black rowers were basking in the sun on the levee, or lounging about the
quarter. At the moment of his appearance, Suzette herself was
indignantly disclaiming any complicity in the jest of the day before.

"Myself, I was making o'ange-flower conserve," she declared; "an' anyhow
I wouldn't go in that ballroom unless madame send me."

"But who was it, then?" insisted Felice.

Mademoiselle Beauvais spread out her fat little hands and lifted her
shoulders. "_Mo pas connais_," she laughed, dropping into patois.

Madame Arnault here interposed. It was but the foolish conceit of some
teasing neighbor, she said, and not worth further discussion. Keith's
blood boiled in his veins at this calm dismissal of the subject, but he
gave no sign. He saw h