ust an ordinary man."

Desiree had turned away from the window as if to go downstairs and meet
her husband. She paused and looked back again over her shoulder towards
the street.

"Is it?" she said rather oddly. "I do not know--I--"

And she stood with the incompleted sentence on her lips waiting
irresolutely for Charles to come upstairs.

In a moment he burst into the room with all his usual exuberance and
high spirit.

"Picture to yourselves!" he cried, standing in the doorway with his arms
extended before him. "I was hurrying to head-quarters when I ran into
the embrace of my dear Louis--my cousin. I have told you a hundred times
that he is brother and father and everything to me. I am so glad that he
should come to-day of all days."

He turned towards the stairs with a gesture of welcome, still with
his two arms outheld, as if inviting the man, who came rather slowly
upstairs, to come to his embrace and to the embrace of those who were
now his relations.

"There was a little suspicion of sadness--I do not know what it was--at
the table; but now it is all gone. All is well now that this unexpected
guest has come. This dear Louis."

He went to the landing as he spoke, and returned bringing by the arm a
man taller than himself and darker, with a still brown face and steady
eyes set close together. He had a lean look of good breeding.

"This dear Louis!" repeated Charles. "My only relative in all the world.
My cousin, Louis d'Arragon. But he, par exemple, spells his name in two
words."

The man bowed gravely--a comprehensive bow; but he looked at Desiree.

"This is my father-in-law," continued Charles breathlessly. "Monsieur
Antoine Sebastian, and Desiree and Mathilde--my wife, my dear
Louis--your cousin, Desiree."

He had turned again to Louis and shook him by the shoulders in the
fulness of his joy. He had not distinguished between Mathilde and
Desiree, and it was towards Mathilde that D'Arragon looked with a polite
and rather formal repetition of his bow.

"It is I... I am Desiree," said the younger sister, coming forward with
a slow gesture of shyness.

D'Arragon took her hand.

"I have been happy," he said, "in the moment of my arrival."

Then he turned to Mathilde and bowed over the hand she held out to him.
Sebastian had come forward with a sudden return of his gracious and
rather old-world manner. He did not offer to shake hands, but bowed.

"A son of Louis d'Arragon who was fortunate enoug