"No great pains were necessary; but had they been I might have taken
them, for, as I have owned to you, Mademoiselle Cicogna, while she was
yet a mystery to me, strangely interested my thoughts or my fancies.
That interest has now ceased. The world of actresses and singers lies
apart from mine."

"Yet," said Alain, in a tone of voice that implied doubt, "if I
understand Lemercier aright, you were going with him to the Bois on the
chance of seeing again the lady in whom your interest has ceased."

"Lemercier's account was not strictly accurate. He stopped his carriage
to speak to me on quite another subject, on which I have consulted him,
and then proposed to take me on to the Bois. I assented; and it was
not till we were in the carriage that he suggested the idea of seeing
whether the pearly-robed lady had resumed her walk in the allee. You may
judge how indifferent I was to that chance when I preferred turning back
with you to going on with him. Between you and me, Marquis, to men of
our age, who have the business of life before them, and feel that if
there be aught in which noblesse oblige it is a severe devotion to noble
objects, there is nothing more fatal to such devotion than allowing the
heart to be blown hither and thither at every breeze of mere fancy, and
dreaming ourselves into love with some fair creature whom we never could
marry consistently with the career we have set before our ambition. I
could not marry an actress,--neither, I presume, could the Marquis de
Rochebriant; and the thought of a courtship which excluded the idea of
marriage to a young orphan of name unblemished, of virtue unsuspected,
would certainly not be compatible with 'devotion to noble objects.'"

Alain involuntarily bowed his head in assent to the proposition, and, it
may be, in submission to an implied rebuke.

The two men walked in silence for some minutes, and Graham first spoke,
changing altogether the subject of conversation. "Lemercier tells me you
decline going much into this world of Paris, the capital of capitals,
which appears so irresistibly attractive to us foreigners."

"Possibly; but, to borrow your words, I have the business of life before
me."

"Business is a good safeguard against the temptations to excess in
pleasure, in which Paris abounds. But there is no business which does
not admit of some holiday, and all business necessitates commerce
with mankind. A propos, I was the other evening at the Duchese de
Tara