"

"Read for yourself." And he handed him the paper.

Moodily M. Binet read. He set the sheet down in silence, and turned his
attention to his breakfast.

"Was I justified or not?" quoth Andre-Louis, who found M. Binet's
behaviour a thought intriguing.

"In what?"

"In coming to Nantes?"

"If I had not thought so, we should not have come," said Binet, and he
began to eat.

Andre-Louis dropped the subject, wondering.

After breakfast he and Climene sallied forth to take the air upon the
quays. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and less cold than it had
lately been. Columbine tactlessly joined them as they were setting out,
though in this respect matters were improved a little when Harlequin
came running after them, and attached himself to Columbine.

Andre-Louis, stepping out ahead with Climene, spoke of the thing that
was uppermost in his mind at the moment.

"Your father is behaving very oddly towards me," said he. "It is almost
as if he had suddenly become hostile."

"You imagine it," said she. "My father is very grateful to you, as we
all are."

"He is anything but grateful. He is infuriated against me; and I think I
know the reason. Don't you? Can't you guess?"

"I can't, indeed."

"If you were my daughter, Climene, which God be thanked you are not, I
should feel aggrieved against the man who carried you away from me. Poor
old Pantaloon! He called me a corsair when I told him that I intend to
marry you."

"He was right. You are a bold robber, Scaramouche."

"It is in the character," said he. "Your father believes in having
his mimes play upon the stage the parts that suit their natural
temperaments."

"Yes, you take everything you want, don't you?" She looked up at him,
half adoringly, half shyly.

"If it is possible," said he. "I took his consent to our marriage by
main force from him. I never waited for him to give it. When, in fact,
he refused it, I just snatched it from him, and I'll defy him now to win
it back from me. I think that is what he most resents."

She laughed, and launched upon an animated answer. But he did not hear
a word of it. Through the bustle of traffic on the quay a cabriolet, the
upper half of which was almost entirely made of glass, had approached
them. It was drawn by two magnificent bay horses and driven by a
superbly livened coachman.

In the cabriolet alone sat a slight young girl wrapped in a lynx-fur
pelisse, her face of a delicate loveliness. She was lean