the evening before; and remembering the curtness
with which Graham had implied disinclination to converse about the fair
Italian, he felt perplexed how to reconcile the impulse of his good
nature with the discretion imposed on his good-breeding. At all events,
a compliment to the lady whom Graham had so admired could do no harm.

"How well Mademoiselle Cicogna looked last night!"

"Did she? It seemed to me that, in health at least, she did not look
very well. Have you heard what day M. Thiers will speak on the war?"

"Thiers? No. Who cares about Thiers? Thank heaven his day is past!
I don't know any unmarried woman in Paris, not even Valerie--I mean
Mademoiselle Duplessis--who has so exquisite a taste in dress as
Mademoiselle Cicogna. Generally speaking, the taste of a female author
is atrocious."

"Really--I did not observe her dress. I am no critic on subjects so
dainty as the dress of ladies, or the tastes of female authors."

"Pardon me," said the beau Marquis, gravely. "As to dress, I think that
so essential a thing in the mind of woman, that no man who cares about
women ought to disdain critical study of it. In woman, refinement of
character is never found in vulgarity of dress. I have only observed
that truth since I came up from Bretagne."

"I presume, my dear Marquis, that you may have read in Bretagne books
which very few not being professed scholars have ever read at Paris;
and possibly you may remember that Horace ascribes the most exquisite
refinement in dress, denoted by the untranslatable words, 'simplex
munditiis,' to a lady who was not less distinguished by the ease and
rapidity with which she could change her affection. Of course that
allusion does not apply to Mademoiselle Cicogna, but there are many
other exquisitely dressed ladies at Paris of whom an ill-fated admirer

'fidem
Mutatosque deos flebit.'

"Now, with your permission, we will adjourn to the box of letters."

The box being produced and unlocked, Alain looked with conscientious
care at its contents before he passed over to Graham's inspection a
few epistles, in which the Englishman immediately detected the same
handwriting as that of the letter from Louise which Richard King had
bequeathed to him.

They were arranged and numbered chronologically.

LETTER I.

DEAR M. LE MARQUIS,--How can I thank you sufficiently for obtaining
and remitting to me those certificates? You are too aware of the