k to the English fogs,
and make her a much better husband than you'd ever be, mon garcon."

Vaughan moved restlessly.

"The idiot! if I thought so---- The devil take you, Emile! why do you
talk of such things?"

At that minute Nina was sitting by one of the windows of their hotel,
watching for Ernest, with a bouquet he had sent her on a table by her
side; and the Rev. Eusebius was talking in a very low tone to her
father. She caught a few words. "Last night--Vaughan at the Freres
Provencaux--a souper au cabinet--Mademoiselle Celine, premiere
danseuse--quite terrible," &c., &c.

Nina flushed scarlet, and turned round. "If you blame your cousin, Mr.
Ruskinstone, why were you there yourself?"

The Warden colored too. With him, as with a good many, foreign air
relaxed the severity of the Decalogue, and what was sin at home, where
everybody knew it, was none at all abroad--under the rose. Some dear
pharisees will not endanger their souls by a carpet-dance in England,
but if a little bird followed them in their holiday across the Channel,
it might chance to see them disporting under a domino noir.

"I had been," he stammered, "to see, as you know, a beautiful specimen
of the arcboutant in a ruined chapel of the Carmelites, some miles down
the Seine. It was very late, and I was very tired, so turned into the
Freres Provencaux to take some little refreshment, and I there saw my
unhappy cousin in society which _ought_, Miss Gordon, to disqualify him
for yours. It is very painful to me to mention such things to you. I
never thought you overheard----"

"Then, if it is very painful to you," Nina burst in, impetuously, her
_bouche de rose_, as De Kerroualle called it, curving haughtily, "why
are you ceaselessly raking up every possible bit of scandal that you can
against your cousin? His life does not clash with yours, his acts do not
matter to you, his extravagance does not rob you. I used to fancy
charity should cover a multitude of sins, but it seems to me that,
now-a-days, clergymen, like Dr. Watt's naughty dogs, only delight to
bark and bite."

"You are cruelly unjust," answered the Warden, in those smooth tones
that irritate one much more than "hard swearing." "I have no other wish
than Christian kindness to poor Ernest. If, in my place as pastor, I
justly condemn his errors and vices, it is only through a loving desire
to wean him from his downward course."

"Your love is singularly vindictive," said his vehement y