r lip. Had she known me better, she might
have smiled. As for me, I was wholly puzzled to account for these
fleeting changes in her humor.

"You have taken a great deal upon your shoulders, Mr. Ritchie," she
said. "They are from all accounts broad ones. There, I was wrong to be
indignant in your presence,--you who seem to have spent your life in
trying to get others out of difficulties. Mercy," she said, with a quick
gesture at my protest, "there are few men with whom one might talk thus
in so short an acquaintance. I love the girl, and I cannot help being
angry with Mr. Temple. I suppose there is something to be said on his
side. Let us hear it--I dare say he could not have a better advocate,"
she finished, with an indefinable smile.

I began at the wrong end of my narrative, and it was some time before I
had my facts arranged in proper sequence. I could not forget that Madame
la Vicomtesse was looking at me fixedly. I reviewed Nick's neglected
childhood; painted as well as I might his temperament and character--his
generosity and fearlessness, his recklessness and improvidence. His
loyalty to those he loved, his detestation of those he hated. I told
how, under these conditions, the sins and vagaries of his parents had
gone far to wreck his life at the beginning of it. I told how I had
found him again with Sevier, how he had come to New Orleans with me
the first time, how he had loved Antoinette, and how he had disappeared
after the dreadful scene in the garden at Les Iles, how I had not seen
him again for five years. Here I hesitated, little knowing how to tell
the Vicomtesse of that affair in Louisville. Though I had a sense that I
could not keep the truth from so discerning a person, I was startled to
find this to be so.

"Yes, yes, I understand," she said quickly. "And in the morning he had
flown with that most worthy of my relatives, Auguste de St. Gre."

I looked at her, finding no words to express my astonishment at this
perspicacity.

"And now what do you intend to do?" she asked. "Find him in New
Orleans, if you can, of course. But how?" She rose quickly, went to
the fireplace, and stood for a moment with her back to me. Suddenly she
turned. "It ought not to be difficult, after all. Auguste de St. Gre is
a fool, and he confirms what you say of the expedition. He is, indeed,
a pretty person to choose for an intrigue of this kind. And your
cousin,--what shall we call him?"

"To say the least, secrecy is n