an in this
grade could venture thus to address, thus to arraign her. His words
were totally incomprehensible to her, though, by the grave rebuke of his
manner, she saw that they were fully meant, and, as he considered, fully
authorized by some wrong done to him. As he laid the gold pieces down
upon her table, an idea of the truth came to her.

"I know nothing of what you complain of; I sent you no money. What is it
you would imply?" she asked him, looking up from where she leaned back
in the low couch into whose depth she had sunk as he had spoken.

"You did not send me these? Not as payment for the chess service?"

"Absolutely not. After what you said the other day, I should have
scarcely been so ill-bred and so heedless of inflicting pain. Who used
my name thus?"

His face lightened with a pleasure and a relief that changed it
wonderfully; that brighter look of gladness had been a stranger to it
for so many years.

"You give me infinite happiness, madame. You little dream how bitter
such slights are where one has lost the power to resent them! It was M.
de Chateauroy, who this morning--"

"Dared to tell you I sent you those coins?"

The serenity of a courtly woman of the world was unbroken, but her
blue and brilliant eyes darkened and gleamed beneath the sweep of their
lashes.

"Perhaps I can scarcely say so much. He gave them, and he implied that
he gave them from you. The words he spoke were these."

He told her them as they had been uttered, adding no more; she saw the
construction they had been intended to bear, and that which they had
borne naturally to his ear; she listened earnestly to the end. Then she
turned to him with the exquisite softness of grace which, when she was
moved to it, contrasted so vividly with the haughty and almost chill
languor of her habitual manner.

"Believe me, I regret deeply that you should have been wounded by this
most coarse indignity; I grieve sincerely that through myself in any way
it should have been brought upon you. As for the perpetrator of it, M.
de Chateauroy will be received here no more; and it shall be my care
that he learns not only how I resent his unpardonable use of my name,
but how I esteem his cruel outrage to a defender of his own Flag. You
did exceedingly well and wisely to acquaint me; in your treatment of it
as an affront that I was without warrant to offer you, you showed the
just indignation of a soldier, and--of what I am very sure that you
are