te.

I felt my cheeks getting red and I looked down.

"I--I like bright colors," I said, defiantly. "They are cheerful
and--and--"

"Sweet Comtesse!" interrupted Antony, in his mocking tone, which does
not anger me. "Tell me about your books."

He got up lazily, and began reading the titles of a heap on the table
beyond.

"What strange books for a little girl! Who on earth recommended you
these?"

"No one. I knew nothing at all about modern books, so I just sent for
all and any I saw in the advertisements in the papers. Most of them
are great rubbish, it seems to me, but there are one or two I like."

He did not speak for a few moments.

"All on philosophy! You ought to read novels at your age."

"I did get some in the beginning, but they seemed all untrue and
mawkish, or sad and dramatic, and the heroines did such silly things,
and the men were mostly brutes, so I have given them up. Unless I see
the advertisement of a thrilling burglary or mystery story, I read
those. They are not true, either, and one knows it, but they make one
forget when it rains."

"All women profess to have a little taste for philosophy and
beautifully bound Marcus Aureliuses, and _Maximes_, and love
poems--clever little scraps covered in exquisite bindings. And one out
of a thousand understands what the letter-press is about. I am weary
of seeing the same on every boudoir-table, and yet some of them are
delightful books in themselves. You have none of these, I see."

He picked up the La Rochefoucauld.

"Yes, here is one, but this is an old edition." He turned to the
title-leaf and read the date, then looked at the cover. It is bound
in brown leather and has the same arms and coronet upon it that my
chatelaine has--the arms of Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt and an
"A. E. de C." entwined, all tooled in faded gold.

"The arms on my knife!" Antony said, pulling it from his
waistcoat-pocket and comparing them.

"My knife," I said.

"Tell me all about her--A.E. de C.," he commanded, seating himself
on the sofa again.

"She was my great-great-grandmother, and was guillotined. See--I
will show you her miniature," and I took it from its case on the
writing-table. I have had a leather covering made to keep safe the
old, paste frame. It has doors that shut, and I don't let her look
too much at the mustard-yellow walls, my pretty ancestress.

"What an extraordinary likeness!" Antony exclaimed, as he looked
at it. "Are you sure I a