his gloves and
wishing most ardently that Providence had entrusted the painful task
before him to some one of a more obdurate and less chivalrous nature.

Wearied of silence, the lady spoke at last.

"Have you nothing of interest respecting your travels to tell me?" she
asked.

Her voice seemed to break the spell which paralyzed him. He turned toward
her with the look of one who nerves himself up to take a desperate
resolution:

"Yes: I have a story to relate to you, and one of more than common
interest."

"Really!" She yawned behind her fan. "Excuse me, but I was at Mrs.
Houdon's ball last evening, and the 'German' was kept up till five o'clock
this morning. I am wretchedly tired. Now do go on with your story: I have
no doubt but that I shall find it amusing, but do not be much surprised if
I fall asleep."

"I think you will find it interesting, and I have no fear of its putting
you to sleep. But you must make me one promise. I am but a poor narrator,
and you must engage not to interrupt me."

"I have no hesitation in promising to remain perfectly quiet, no matter
how startling your incidents or how vivid your descriptions may be."

She leaned back among the cushions with another stifled yawn and shaded
her eyes with her fan. Without heeding the veiled impertinence of her
manner, Horace commenced his narrative:

"Some twenty-five years ago a friendless, penniless Englishwoman died at
one of the cheap boarding-schools in Dieppe, where she had officiated for
some time as English teacher and general drudge. She left behind her a
little girl about five years of age--a pretty, engaging child, whose
beauty and infantile fascinations so won the heart of Madame Tellier, the
proprietress of the establishment, that she decided to take charge of the
little creature and educate her, her project being to fit her for the post
of English teacher in her school. But the pretty child grew up to be a
beautiful but unprincipled girl, with an inborn passion for indolence and
luxury. At the age of seventeen she eloped from the school with a young
Parisian gentleman, who had been spending the summer months at one of the
seaside hotels in Dieppe, and her benefactress saw her and heard of her no
more.

"We will pass over the events of the next few years. It would hardly
interest you to follow, as I did, each step by which the heroine of my
history progressed ever downward on the path of vice. We find her at last
traveling in Italy