for his
daughter's hand.

"I should be delighted to see them, Monsieur," I answered.

"Would you?" he exclaimed, his face lighting up as he glanced at me.
"Alas, Madame de St. Gre and I have promised to go to our neighbors',
Monsieur and Madame Bertrand's, for to-night. But, to-morrow, if you
have leisure, we shall look at it together. And not a word of this to my
daughter, Monsieur," he added apprehensively; "she would never forgive
me. She dislikes my talking of her, but at times I cannot help it. It
was only last year that she was very angry with me, and would not speak
to me for days, because I boasted of her having watched at the bedside of
a poor gentleman who came here and got the fever. You will not tell
her?"

"Indeed I shall not, Monsieur," I answered.

"It is strange," he said abruptly, "it is strange that this gentleman and
his wife should likewise have had letters to us from Monsieur Gratiot.
They came from St. Louis, and they were on their way to Paris."

"To Paris?" I cried; "what was their name?"

He looked at me in surprise.

"Clive," he said.

"Clive!" I cried, leaning towards him in my saddle. "Clive! And what
became of them?"

This time he gave me one of his searching looks, and it was not unmixed
with astonishment.

"Why do you ask. Monsieur?" he demanded. "Did you know them?"

I must have shown that I was strangely agitated. For the moment I could
not answer.

"Monsieur Gratiot himself spoke of them to me," I said, after a little;
"he said they were an interesting couple."

"Pardieu!" exclaimed Monsieur de St. Gre, "he put it mildly." He gave me
another look. "There was something about them, Monsieur, which I could
not fathom. Why were they drifting? They were people of quality who had
seen the world, who were by no means paupers, who had no cause to travel
save a certain restlessness. And while they were awaiting the sailing of
the packet for France they came to our house--the old one in the Rue
Bourbon that was burned. I would not speak ill of the dead, but Mr.
Clive I did not like. He fell sick of the fever in my house, and it was
there that Antoinette and Madame de St. Gre took turns with his wife in
watching at his bedside. I could do nothing with Antoinette, Monsieur,
and she would not listen to my entreaties, my prayers, my commands. We
buried the poor fellow in the alien ground, for he did not die in the
Church, and after that my daughter clung to Mrs. Clive. She would not