wrapped in a shawl on a sofa in the corner. Jack
had made many signs to Ida, who pretended not to understand, carried
away as she was by the pleasure and happiness about her. Jack was like
an old father who is anxious to take his daughter home from a ball.

"It is late," he said.

"Wait, dear," was her answer. At length, however, he seized her cloak,
and wrapping it around her, drew her away. There was no train at that
hour, and indeed no omnibus; fortunately a fiacre was passing, which
they hailed. But the newly married pair decided to return on foot
through the Bois de Vincennes. The fresh morning air was delicious
after the heat of the restaurant; the child slept sweetly on Belisaire's
shoulder, and did not even awake when he was placed in his bed. Madame
Belisaire threw aside her wedding-dress, assumed a plainer one, and at
once entered on the duties of the day.

CHAPTER XXI.~~EFFECTS OF POETRY.

The first visit of Madame de Barancy at Etoilles gave Jack great
pleasure and also great anxiety. He was proud of his mother, but he knew
her, nevertheless, to be weak and rash. He feared Cecile's calm judgment
and intuitive perceptions, keen and quick as they sometimes are in the
young. The first few moments tranquillized him a little. The emphatic
tone in which Ida addressed Cecile as "my daughter" was all well enough,
but when under the influence of a good breakfast Madame de Barancy
dropped her serious air and began some of her extravagant stories, Jack
felt all his apprehensions revive. She kept her auditors on the _qui
vive_. Some one spoke of relatives that M. Rivals had in the Pyrenees.

"Ah, yes, the Pyrenees!" she sighed. "Gavarni, the Mer de Glace, and all
that. I made that journey fifteen years ago with a friend of my family,
the Duc de Casares, a Spaniard. I made his acquaintance at Biarritz in a
most amusing way!"

Cecile having said how fond she was of the sea, Ida again began,--

"Ah, my love, had you seen it as I have seen it in a tempest off Palma!
I was in the saloon with the captain, a coarse sort of man, who insisted
on my drinking punch. I refused. Then the wretch got very angry, and
opened the window, took me just at the waist, and held me above the
water in the lightning and rain."

Jack tried to cut in two these dangerous recitals, but they came to life
again, like those reptiles which, however mutilated, still retain life
and animation.

The climax of his uneasiness was reached, ho