l, catching the idea; "don't be
alarmed, I'll pay you for it."

"And my zeal, my devotion?"

"Put 'em in figures."

"And my prob--?"

"Add it up."

"And my integ--?"

"Add them together: and don't bother me."

"I see! I see! my poor soldier. You are no match for a woman's tongue."

"Nor, for a notary's. Go to h---, and send in your bill!" roared the
soldier in a fury. "Well, will you go?" and he marched at him.

The notary scuttled out, with something between a snarl and a squeak.

Josephine hid her face in her hands.

"What is the matter with you?" inquired Raynal. "Not crying again,
surely!"

"Me! I never cry--hardly. I hid my face because I could not help
laughing. You frightened me, sir," said she: then very demurely, "I was
afraid you were going to beat him."

"No, no; a good soldier never leathers a civilian if he can possibly
help it; it looks so bad; and before a lady!"

"Oh, I would have forgiven you, monsieur," said Josephine benignly, and
something like a little sun danced in her eye.

"Now, mademoiselle, since my referee has proved a pig, it is your turn.
Choose you a mutual friend."

Josephine hesitated. "Ours is so young. You know him very well. You
are doubtless the commandant of whom I once heard him speak with such
admiration: his name is Riviere, Edouard Riviere."

"Know him? he is my best officer, out and out." And without a moment's
hesitation he took Edouard's present address, and accepted that youthful
Daniel as their referee; then looked at his watch and marched off to his
public duties with sabre clanking at his heels.

The notary went home gnashing his teeth. His sweet revenge was turned to
wormwood this day. Raynal's parting commissions rang in his ear; in his
bitter mood the want of logical sequence in the two orders disgusted
him.

So he inverted them.

He sent in a thundering bill the very next morning, but postponed the
other commission till his dying day.

As for Josephine, she came into the drawing-room beaming with love
and happiness, and after kissing both her mother and Rose with gentle
violence, she let them know the strange turn things had taken.

And she whispered to Rose, "Only think, YOUR Edouard to be OUR referee!"

Rose blushed and bent over her work; and wondered how Edouard would
discharge so grave an office.

The matter approached a climax; for, as the reader is aware, Edouard was
hourly expected at Beaurepaire.

He did not come; but it was n