hese that he made the acquaintance of Phillip
Gayerson, a young fellow intended for the diplomatic service. Phillip
Gayerson, be it known at once, was the brother of that Isabella
Gayerson to whose hand, heart and estate the present chronicler was
accredited by a fond father, and about whom, indeed, he had quarrelled
with the author of his being.

The name of Dick Howard being at that time unknown to the little
Frenchman, Alphonse Giraud made no mention of it to Gayerson a
self-absorbed man, who had probably forgotten my existence at this
time.

My countryman, as I afterwards learned, had come to Paris with the
object of learning the language, which by reason of its subtlety lends
itself most readily to diplomatic purposes, the most expressive
language, to my thinking, that the world has yet evolved, not
excepting the much-vaunted tongue in which Homer wrote. Phillip and I
had been boys together, and of all the comrades of my youth I should
have selected him the last to distinguish himself in statecraft. He
was a quiet, unobservant, and, as previously noted, self-absorbed man,
with a sense of the picturesque, which took the form of mediocre
water-colour sketching. His appearance was in his favour, for he was
visibly a gentleman; a man, moreover, of refined thought and habit,
whom burly Norfolk squires dubbed effeminate.

Alphonse Giraud liked him--the world is sunny to those who look at it
through sunny eyes--and took him up, as the saying goes, without
hesitation. He procured for him an invitation to a semi-state ball,
held, as some no doubt remember, in the autumn of 1869. It was Lucille
de Clericy's first ball, and Giraud renewed there a childish
friendship with one whose hair he confessed to have pulled in the
unchivalrous days of his infancy.

Alphonse, who was of a frank nature, as are many of his countrymen,
told Madame de Clericy, whom he escorted to the refreshment room after
dancing with her daughter, that he loved Lucille.

"But my dear Alphonse," retorted that lady, "you had forgotten her
existence until this evening."

This objection to his passion the lightsome Alphonse waived aside with
a perfectly gloved little hand.

"But," he answered earnestly, "unknown to myself her vision must
always have been _here_."

And he touched his shirt-front with the tips of his fingers gently,
remembering the delicacy of his linen.

"It is an angel!" he added, with an upward glance of his bright little
eyes, a