an
I have ever known, and I have seen many."

"And Mademoiselle de St. Gre?" I asked.

"Tell me about this man for whom Antoinette has ruined her life," said
Madame la Vicomtesse, brusquely. "Is he worth it? No, no man is worth
what she has suffered. What has become of him? Where is he? Did you
not tell her that you would bring him back?"

"I said that I would bring him back if I could," I answered, "and I meant
it, Madame."

Madame la Vicomtesse bit her 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