ed. "You suppose a girl without
self-respect or good sense, and perhaps a man without honor. Here, of
course, things cannot be like that. Society seems founded upon different
ideas from those prevalent with us about men and women. _Here_, I admit,
a girl finds comfort and protection and ease of mind in a good chaperon.
Yet it seemed strange to me to put on leading-strings when I came out
here: I had been used to take care of myself for so many years."

"Why, Miss Leare," I said, laughing, "you cannot have been many years in
society."

"I am twenty," she said frankly, "and we came to Europe about three
years ago. But before that time I had been in company a good deal. Not
in the city, for I was not 'out,' but in the hotels at Newport, at the
Springs and in the country. In America one has but to do what one knows
is kind and right, and no one will think evil: here one may do, without
suspecting it, so many compromising things."

"Does the instinct that you speak of to be kind and right always guide
the young American lady?"

"I suppose so--so far as I know. It _must_. She walks by it, and sets
her feet down firmly. Here I feel all the time as if I were walking
among traps blindfolded."

The ball of the Jardin d'Hiver in the Champs Elysees was a superb
success. The immense glass-house was fitted up for dancing, and all went
merry as a marriage-bell, with a crater about to open under our feet, as
at the duchess of Richmond's ball at Brussels.

Miss Leare was there, but quiet and dignified. There was not the
smallest touch of vulgarity about her. The coarse readiness to accept
publicity which distinguishes the underbred woman, whether in England or
America, the desire to show off a foreign emancipation from what appear
ridiculous French rules, were not in her.

Yet she might have amused herself as she liked with complete impunity,
for Mrs. Leare appeared to leave her entirely alone. I danced with her
as often as she would permit me, and my heart was no longer in my own
possession when I put-her into her carriage about dawn.

Two or three days after I called, but the ladies were not in, so that
except at church at the Hotel Marboeuf on Sunday morning I saw nothing
of Miss Hermione. Monday, February 21st, was sunny and bright. The
public excitement was such that an unusual number of working-men were
keeping their St. Crispin. The soldiers, however, were confined to their
quarters: not a uniform was to be seen abroad.