et
so plainly appeals to me." Already he saw in fancy her starlike eyes
raised to his in mute gratitude, her white hand laid confidingly on his
arm.

The party of visitors remained at La Glorieuse overnight. The negro
fiddlers came in, and there was dancing in the old-fashioned double
parlors and on the moonlit galleries. Felice was unnaturally gay. Keith
looked on gloomily, taking no part in the amusement.

"_Il est bien bete_, your yellow-haired Marylander," whispered Suzette
Beauvais to her friend.

He went early to his room, but he watched in vain for some sign from his
beautiful neighbor. He grew sick with apprehension. Had Madame
Arnault--But no; she would not dare. "I will wait one more day," he
finally decided; "and then--"

The next morning, after a late breakfast, some one proposed impromptu
charades and tableaux. Madame Arnault good-naturedly sent for the keys
to the tall presses built into the walls, which contained the
accumulated trash and treasure of several generations. Mounted on a
stepladder, Robert Beauvais explored the recesses, and threw down to the
laughing crowd embroidered shawls and scarfs yellow with age, soft
muslins of antique pattern, stiff big-flowered brocades, scraps of gauze
ribbon, gossamer laces. On one topmost shelf he came upon a small wooden
box inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Felice reached up for it, and, moved by
some undefined impulse, Richard came and stood by her side while she
opened it. A perfume which he recognized arose from it as she lifted a
fold of tissue-paper. Some strings of Oriental pearls of extraordinary
size, and perfect in shape and color, were coiled underneath, with a
coral necklace, whose pendant of amber had broken off and rolled into a
corner. With them--he hardly restrained an exclamation, and his hand
involuntarily sought his breast-pocket at sight of the handkerchief with
a drop of fresh blood in one corner! Felice trembled without knowing
why. Madame Arnault, who had just entered the room, took the box from
her quietly, and closed the lid with a snap. The girl, accustomed to
implicit obedience, asked no questions; the others, engaged in turning
over the old-time finery, had paid no attention.

"Does she think to disarm me by such puerile tricks?" he thought,
turning a look of angry warning on the old madame; and in the steady
gaze which she fixed on him he read a haughty defiance.

He forced himself to enter into the sports of the day, and he walked