ocured for his friends prodigious diversion.

"How do you like this, old girl?" Batterby asked one night, at the
Moulin de la Galette, a dizzying, not very decorous, and to the
unsophisticated visitor a dangerous place of entertainment. "Better than
Great Coram Street, isn't it?"

She smiled and laid her hand on his. She was a woman of few words but of
many caressing actions.

"I ought to let you into a secret," said he. "This is our honeymoon."

"Who would have thought it?"

[Illustration: FLEURETTE DANCED WITH ARISTIDE, AS LIGHT AS AN AUTUMN
LEAF TOSSED BY THE WIND]

"A fortnight ago she was being killed in a Bloomsbury boarding-house.
There were two of 'em--she and a girl called Carrie. I used to call 'em
Fetch and Carrie. This one was Fetch. Well, she fetched me, didn't you,
old girl? And now you're Mrs. Reginald Batterby, living at your ease,
eh?"

"Madame would grace any sphere," said Aristide.

"I wish I had more education," said Fleurette, humbly. "M. Pujol and
yourself are so clever that you must laugh at me."

"We do sometimes, but you mustn't mind us. Remember--at the
what-you-call-it--the little shanty at Versailles----?"

"The Grand Trianon," replied Aristide.

"That's it. When you were showing us the rooms. 'What is the Empress
Josephine doing now?'" He mimicked her accent. "Ha! ha! And the poor
soul gone to glory a couple of hundred years ago."

The little mouth puckered at the corners and moisture gathered in the
blue eyes.

"_Mais, mon Dieu_, it was natural, the mistake," cried Aristide,
gallantly. "The Empress Eugenie, the wife of another Napoleon, is still
living."

"_Bien sur_," said Fleurette. "How was I to know?"

"Never mind, old girl," said Batterby. "You're living all right, and out
of that beastly boarding-house, and that's the chief thing. Another
month of it would have killed her. She had a cough that shook her to
bits. She's looking better already, isn't she, Pujol?"

After this Aristide learned much of her simple history, which she, at
first, had been too shy to reveal. The child of Finnish sea-folk who had
drifted to Brest and died there, she had been adopted by an old Breton
sea-dog and his wife. On their death she had entered, as maid, the
service of an English lady residing in the town, who afterwards had
taken her to England. After a while reverses of fortune had compelled
the lady to dismiss her, and she had taken the situation in the
boarding-hou