were under a Republic; anything against a noble was believed. But I am
sure Victor de Mauleon was not the man to commit a larceny. However, it
is quite true that he left Paris, and I don't know what has become of
him since." Here he touched De Breze, who, though still near, had not
been listening to this conversation, but interchanging jest and laughter
with Lemercier on the motley scene of the dance.

"De Breze, have you ever heard what became of poor dear Victor de
Mauleon?--you knew him."

"Knew him? I should think so. Who could be in the great world and not
know le beau Victor? No; after he vanished I never heard more of him;
doubtless long since dead. A good-hearted fellow in spite of all his
sins."

"My dear Monsieur de Breze, did you know his half-sister?" asked
Graham,--"a Madame Duval?"

"No. I never heard he had a half-sister. Halt there; I recollect that
I met Victor once, in the garden at Versailles, walking arm-in-arm
with the most beautiful girl I ever saw; and when I complimented him
afterwards at the Jockey Club on his new conquest, he replied very
gravely that the young lady was his niece. 'Niece!' said I; 'why,
there can't be more than five or six years between you.' 'About that,
I suppose,' said he; 'my half-sister, her mother, was more than twenty
years older than I at the time of my birth.' I doubted the truth of his
story at the time; but since you say he really had a sister, my doubt
wronged him."

"Have you never seen that same young lady since?"

"Never."

"How many years ago was this?"

"Let me see, about twenty or twenty-one years ago. How time flies!"

Graham still continued to question, but could learn no further
particulars. He turned to quit the gardens just as the band was striking
up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air; and mingled with that
German music his ear caught the sprightly sounds of the French laugh,
one laugh distinguished from the rest by a more genuine ring of
light-hearted joy, the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens,
and the sound of which had then saddened him. Looking towards the
quarter from which it came, he again saw the "Ondine of Paris." She was
not now the centre of a group. She had just found Gustave Rameau, and
was clinging to his arm with a look of happiness in her face, frank
and innocent as a child's; and so they passed amid the dancers down a
solitary lamplit alley, till lost to the Englishman's lingering gaze.

CHAPTER X