of reading annoyed me.

"No, Mademoiselle, it isn't from books that one draws sourness. I find
more sweetness in them than in--most things." I was looking straight at
her as I said this.

She pretended to laugh again, but turned quite red.

"Nay, forgive me," I said, instantly softened. "Ah, Celeste, you know
too well what is the sweetest of all books for my reading." By my look
and sigh, she knew I meant her face. But she chose to be contemptuous.

"Poh! What should a pale scholar know of such books? I tell you,
Monsieur de Launay, you will never be a man till you leave your books
and see a little of the world."

Though she called me truly enough a pale scholar, I was scarlet for a
moment.

"And what do you know of the world, then?" I retorted. "Or of men
either?"

"I am only a girl. But as to men, I have met one or two. There is your
father, for example. And that brave and handsome Brignan de Brignan."

Whether I loved or not, I was certainly capable of jealousy; and
jealousy of the fiercest arose at the name of Brignan de Brignan. I had
never seen him; but she had mentioned him to me before, too many times
indeed for me to hear his name now with composure. He was a young
gentleman of the King's Guard, of whom, by reason of a distant
relationship, her family had seen much during a residence of several
months in Paris.

"Brignan de Brignan," I echoed. "Yes, I dare say he has looked more into
the faces of women than into books."

"And more into the face of danger than into either. That's what has made
him the man he is."

"Tut!" I cried, waving my Plutarch; "there's more manly action in this
book than a thousand Brignans could perform in all their lives--more
danger encountered."

"An old woman might read it for all that. Would it make her manly? Well,
Monsieur Henri, if you choose to encounter danger only in books, there's
nobody to complain. But you shouldn't show malice toward those who
prefer to meet it in the wars or on the road."

"Malice? Not I. What is Brignan de Brignan to me? You may say what you
please--this Plutarch is as good a school of heroism as any officer of
the King's Guard ever went to."

"Yet the officers of the King's Guard aren't pale, moping fellows like
you lovers of books. Ah, Monsieur Henri, if you mean to be a monk, well
and good. But otherwise, do you know what would change your complexion
for the better? A lively brush with real dangers on the field, or in
Paris, or anyw