r several homes, leaving
him alone with his friend Kalm.

They two at once passed into a little museum of minerals, plants, birds,
and animals, where they sat down, eager as two boy-students. The world,
its battles, and its politics were utterly forgotten, as they conversed
far into the night and examined, with the delight of new discoverers,
the beauty and variety of nature's forms that exist in the New World.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. A WILD NIGHT INDOORS AND OUT.

The Chevalier de Pean had been but too successful in his errand of
mischief to the Manor House of Tilly.

A few days had sufficed for this accomplished ambassador of Bigot to
tempt Le Gardeur to his ruin, and to triumph in his fall.

Upon his arrival at the Seigniory, De Pean had chosen to take up his
quarters at the village inn, in preference to accepting the proffered
hospitality of the Lady de Tilly, whom, however, he had frequently to
see, having been craftily commissioned by Bigot with the settlement
of some important matters of business relating to her Seigniory, as a
pretext to visit the Manor House and linger in the village long enough
to renew his old familiarity with Le Gardeur.

The visits of De Pean to the Manor House were politely but not cordially
received. It was only by reason of the business he came upon that he
was received at all. Nevertheless he paid his court to the ladies of the
Manor, as a gentleman anxious to remove their prejudices and win their
good opinion.

He once, and but once, essayed to approach Amelie with gallantry, a
hair-breadth only beyond the rigid boundary-line of ordinary politeness,
when he received a repulse so quick, so unspoken and invisible, that
he could not tell in what it consisted, yet he felt it like a sudden
paralysis of his powers of pleasing. He cared not again to encounter the
quick glance of contempt and aversion which for an instant flashed in
the eyes of Amelie when she caught the drift of his untimely admiration.

A woman is never so Rhadamanthean in her justice, and so quick in her
execution of it, as when she is proud and happy in her love for another
man: she is then indignant at every suggestion implying any doubt of the
strength, purity, and absoluteness of her devotion.

De Pean ground his teeth in silent wrath at this quiet but unequivocal
repulse, and vowed a bitter vow that Amelie should ere long repent in
sackcloth and ashes for the wound inflicted upon his vanity and still
more upo