to Sieur Bruce-Errington, and when there
is,--I--I, Louise Renaud--I know who ees at the bottom of eet!"

So saying, with a whirl of her black silk dress and a flash of her white
muslin apron, she disappeared. Briggs, left alone, sauntered to a
looking-glass hanging on the wall and studied with some solicitude a
pimple that had recently appeared on his clean-shaven face.

"Mischief!" he soliloquized. "I des-say! Whenever a lot of women gets
together, there's sure to be mischief. Dear creeturs! They love it like
the best Clicquot. Sprightly young pusson is Mamzelle. Knows who's at
the bottom of 'eet,' does she! Well--she's not the only one as knows the
same thing. As long as doors 'as cracks and key'oles, it ain't in the
least difficult to find out wot goes on inside boo-dwars and
drorin'-rooms. And 'ighly interestin' things one 'ears now and
then--'ighly interestin'!"

And Briggs leered suavely at his own reflection, and then resumed the
perusal of his paper. He was absorbed in the piquant, highly flavored
details of a particularly disgraceful divorce case, and he was by no
means likely to disturb himself from his refined enjoyment for any less
important reason than the summons of Lord Winsleigh's bell, which rang
so seldom that, when it did, he made it a point of honor to answer it
immediately, for, as he said--

"His lordship knows wot is due to me, and I knows wot is due to
'im--therefore it 'appens we are able to ekally respect each other!"

CHAPTER XXII.

"If thou wert honorable,
Thou would'st have told this tale for virtue, not
For such an end thou seek'st; as base, as strange.
Thou wrong'st a gentleman who is as far
From thy report, as thou from honor."
_Cymbeline._

Summer in Shakespeare Land! Summer in the heart of England--summer in
wooded Warwickshire,--a summer brilliant, warm, radiant with flowers,
melodious with the songs of the heaven--aspiring larks, and the sweet,
low trill of the forest-hidden nightingales. Wonderful and divine it is
to hear the wild chorus of nightingales that sing beside Como in the hot
languorous nights of an Italian July--wonderful to hear them maddening
themselves with love and music, and almost splitting their slender
throats with the bursting bubbles of burning song,--but there is
something, perhaps, more dreamily enchanting still,--to hear them
warbling less passionately but more p