for madame is clever and well liked. I tell her she has a Quaker salon,
which is not my wit, but true."

"I had supposed Friends too rigid for this."

"Oh, there are Quakers and Quakers, and sometimes the overseers feel
called upon to remonstrate; and then there is an unpleasantness, and our
hostess is all of a sudden moved by the spirit to say things, and has
her claws out. And my rose, my rose Pearl, can be prickly, too."

"She does not look like it, sir."

"No? When does a young woman look like what she is or may be? She is a
good girl--as good as God makes them; her wits as yet a bit muzzled by
the custom of Friends. A fair bud--prophetic of what the rose will be."

They wandered on to Arch Street and then westward. "Here," said Schmidt,
as they turned into the open entrance of a graveyard--"here I come at
evening sometimes. Read that. There are sermons in these stones, and
history."

De Courval saw on a gray slab, "Benjamin Franklin and Deborah, his
wife." He took off his hat, saying as he stood: "My father knew him. He
came to Normandy once to see the model farms of our cousin,
Rochefoucauld Liancourt."

"Indeed. I never knew the philosopher, but the duke--I knew the duke
well,--in Paris,--oh, very well, long ago; a high-minded noble. We will
come here again and talk of this great man, under the marble, quiet as
never in life. You must not be late for Wynne. He will not like that."

Turning southward and walking quickly, they came in half an hour to the
busy space in front of Wynne's warehouse. He met them at the door, where
Schmidt, leaving them, said, "I leave you a man, Colonel Wynne."

Wynne said, smiling: "I am no longer a colonel, Vicomte, but a plain
merchant. Have the kindness to follow me, Vicomte," and so passed on
through a room where clerks were busy and into a small, neatly kept
office.

"Sit down, Vicomte. We must have a long talk and come quickly to know
one another. You speak English, I observe, and well, too. And, now, you
have a letter of exchange on me for five thousand livres, or, rather,
two hundred pounds. Better to leave it with me. I can give you interest
at six per cent., and you may draw on me at need. Have you any present
want?"

"No, sir; none--just yet none."

"I am told that you left France for England and have had, pardon me,
much to lament."

"Yes, we have suffered like many others." He was indisposed to be frank
where there was no need to say more.

"What do you