adiant shrine of flowers. Nine feet long it was, and
not much less in width, and its solid oaken sides rose some two feet from
the floor. It was heaped indeed with the bronze-green fronds and
russet-gold stalks of fresh-cut bracken, but this was only the ordinary
workaday foundation, and was almost hidden beneath a coverlet of
roses--roses of every hue from damask-red to saffron-yellow and purest
white, heaped and strewn in richest profusion and filling the room with
perfume. From somewhere in the roof above, long sprays of creeping geranium
and half-opened honeysuckle and branches of tree fuchsia hung down to the
sides of the couch and formed a canopy, the most beautiful one could
imagine. For the flowers of the honeysuckle looked like tiny baby-fingers
reaching down for something below, and the red and purple fuchsias looked
like a rain of falling stars. And beneath it sat the Queen of the Revels
dressed all in white, her unbound hair rippling about her like a dark
sunset cloud, till it lost itself among the creamy many-coloured petals
below,--Carette, the loveliest flower of all.

She had shaken her hair over her face to veil her modesty at the very
outspoken admiration of some of the earlier comers, but I caught the
sparkle of her dark eyes as she looked up at me through the silken mesh,
and the sweet slim figure set the flowery canopy shaking with its
restrained eagerness. And my heart jumped within me at the lovely sight.

Disregardful of custom, I was stooping to speak to her, when Aunt Jeanne
dragged me away with a gratified laugh, and a quick "Nenni, nenni! She may
not speak till the time comes, or dear knows what will happen to us! Come
away, mon gars, and tell me where you have been and what you have been
doing," and she sat me down in a corner at the far end of the big dresser,
and herself beside me so that I should not get away, and made me talk, but
I could not take my eyes fora moment off the slim white figure on the
radiant bed of roses.

A most delightful place at all times was that great kitchen at Beaumanoir,
with its huge fireplace like a smaller room opening off the larger, and put
to many other uses besides simply that of cooking;--its black oak presses
and dressers and shelves all aglow with much polishing, and bright with
crockery and pewter; its great hanging rack under the ceiling, laden with
hams and sides of bacon and a hundred and one odds and ends of household
use; and the great table in t