llor's knee--'as usual.'

'No, Unziar is the lucky man,' Rallywood answered without significance
in his tone.

'Nonsense! Anthony is her cousin!' said the girl impatiently.

Rallywood's grey eyes were on her face.

'Whose cousin? What do you mean?' he asked innocently.

Valerie bit her lip. She hated this Englishman. Of all her acquaintances
he alone, in his blundering way, was able to put her somehow at a
disadvantage.

'When the Duke goes to Sagan,' she said, without noticing his question,
'the Count has the privilege as colonel-in-chief of the Guard, of
inviting any two officers he pleases to act with the escort. So we shall
see.'

'I wonder,' said Rallywood after a pause, 'where you get your
impressions from, Mademoiselle?'

'I see--like other people. We all form our judgments on what we see
and--know!'

'What do you know, for instance?'

'I heard of you when you were at Kofn Ford, near the Castle of Sagan,'
she answered.

Rallywood was only human, and however moderately he may have returned
Madame de Sagan's preference, he was fully aware of its existence. In
those days on the frontier he had, rather from fastidiousness than
principle perhaps, avoided her and her invitations whenever possible.
But that was one thing; it was another to hear the matter coolly
alluded to by the girl beside him. Involuntarily he drew a little away
from her. His notions were founded less on actual knowledge and
experience of women--for of that he had little--than gathered from that
idealized version of the sex with which the right-minded male animal is
usually furnished by his own mental and emotional processes. So far his
intercourse with Isolde of Sagan had been limited to certain sentimental
passages; the initiative lay with the lady, but Rallywood had once or
twice been distinctly wrought upon by the appeals to his sympathy and
pity. Now, however, looked at from a fresh standpoint, the one in fact
from which Valerie viewed it, the subject became suddenly repellent, and
he slid away from the discussion with another question.

'What has Unziar been saying of me? You have treated me differently
since--that night.'

There appeared to be no need to particularize the night.

Mademoiselle Selpdorf understood both the first involuntary movement and
the change of subject, and resented them equally.

'Anthony is generous, so generous!' she said with some warmth. 'I
suppose it is an English trait to take everything and to g