loved.
Many are dead, and many are scattered and homeless."

"I have often thought of your sorrows, Madame," I said.

"Which reminds me that I should not burden you with them, my good friend,
when you are recovering. Do you know that you have been very near to
death?"

"I know, Madame," I faltered. "I know that had it not been for you I
should not be alive to-day. I know that you risked your life to save my
own."

She did not answer at once, and when I looked at her she was gazing out
over the flowers on the lawn.

"My life did not matter," she said. "Let us not talk of that."

I might have answered, but I dared not speak for fear of saying what was
in my heart. And while I trembled with the repression of it, she was
changed. She turned her face towards me and smiled a little.

"If you had obeyed me you would not have been so ill," she said.

"Then I am glad that I did not obey you."

"Your cousin, the irrepressible Mr. Temple, says I am a tyrant. Come
now, do you think me a tyrant?"

"He has also said other things of you."

"What other things?"

I blushed at my own boldness.

"He said that if he were not in love with Antoinette, he would be in love
with you."

"A very safe compliment," said the Vicomtesse. "Indeed, it sounds too
cautious for Mr. Temple. You must have tampered with it, Mr. Ritchie,"
she flashed. "Mr. Temple is a boy. He needs discipline. He will have
too easy a time with Antoinette."

"He is not the sort of man you should marry," I said, and sat amazed at
it.

She looked at me strangely.

"No, he is not," she answered. "He is more or less the sort of man I
have been thrown with all my life. They toil not, neither do they spin.
I know you will not misunderstand me, for I am very fond of him. Mr.
Temple is honest, fearless, lovable, and of good instincts. One cannot
say as much for the rest of his type. They go through life fighting,
gaming, horse-racing, riding to hounds,--I have often thought that it was
no wonder our privileges came to an end. So many of us were steeped in
selfishness and vice, were a burden on the world. The early nobles, with
all their crimes, were men who carved their way. Of such were the lords
of the Marches. We toyed with politics, with simplicity, we wasted the
land, we played cards as our coaches passed through famine-stricken
villages. The reckoning came. Our punishment was not given into the
hands of the bourgeois, who would have dealt justly, but to t