in a jessamine thicket, there is no other sound except that of a
gardener's broom sweeping on the other side of the laurel hedge.

The Babe feels that it is now or never for his _coup de maitre_.

He plucks a rose, the best one he has, and offers it to Madame Sabaroff,
who accepts it gratefully, though it is considerably earwig-eaten, and
puts it in her corsage.

The eyes of Brandolin follow it wistfully.

The Babe glances at them alternately from under his hair, then his small
features assume an expression of cherubic innocence and unconsciousness.
The most _ruse_ little rogue in the whole kingdom, he knows how to make
himself look like a perfect reproduction of Sir Joshua Reynolds's
Artlessness or Infancy. He gazes up in Xenia Sabaroff's face with
angelic simplicity admirably assumed.

"When you marry him," says the Babe, pointing to Brandolin, with
admirably affected _naivete_, "you will let me hold up your train, won't
you? I always hold up my friends' trains when they marry. I have a
page's dress, Louis something or other, and a sword, and a velvet cap
with a badge and a feather: I always look very well."

"Oh, what an odious _petit-maitre_ you will be when you are a man, my
dear Babe!" says Xenia Sabaroff.

She does not take any notice of his opening words, but a flush of color
comes over her face and passes as quickly as it came.

"_Petit-maitre_,--what is that?" says the Babe. "But you will let me,
won't you? And don't marry him till the autumn, or even the winter,
because the velvet makes me so hot when the day is hot, and the dress
wouldn't look nice made in thin things."

"Could I only add my prayer to his," murmurs Brandolin, "and hope that
in the autumn----"

Xenia Sabaroff looks at him with a strange gaze: it is penetrating,
dreamy, wistful, inquiring.

"We jest as the child jests," she says, abruptly, and walks onward.

"I do not jest," says Brandolin.

The Babe glances at them under his thick eyelashes, and, being a _fine
mouche_, only innocent in appearance, he runs off after a butterfly. He
has not been brought up in a feminine atmosphere of _poudre de riz_ and
_lait d'iris_ without learning discretion.

CHAPTER XIII.

"The Babe is a better courtier than gardener," says Xenia Sabaroff, as
she shakes a green aphis out of her rose: her tone is careless, but her
voice is not quite under her command, and has a little tremor in it.

Brandolin looks at her with impassioned eyes: h