over the task; his mother
came and looked over his shoulder.

"Louisa Eugenie--how did you know that, Guy? Louisa Eugenie Sil--is
that your name, my dear?"

The question, simple as it was, seemed to throw the governess into much
confusion, even agitation. At last, she drew herself up with the old
repulsive gesture, which of late had been slowly wearing off.

"No--I will not deceive you any longer. My right name is Louise
Eugenie D'Argent."

Mrs. Halifax started. "Are you a Frenchwoman?"

"On my father's side--yes."

"Why did you not tell me so?"

"Because, if you remember, at our first interview, you said no
Frenchwoman should educate your daughter. And I was
homeless--friendless."

"Better starve than tell a falsehood," cried the mother, indignantly.

"I told no falsehood. You never asked me of my parentage."

"Nay," said John, interfering, "you must not speak in that manner to
Mrs. Halifax. Why did you renounce your father's name?"

"Because English people would have scouted my father's daughter. You
knew him--everybody knew him--he was D'Argent the Jacobin--D'Argent the
Bonnet Rouge."

She threw out these words defiantly, and quitted the room.

"This is a dreadful discovery. Edwin, you have seen most of her--did
you ever imagine--"

"I knew it, mother," said Edwin, without lifting his eyes from his
book. "After all, French or English, it makes no difference."

"I should think not, indeed!" cried Guy, angrily. "Whatever her father
is, if any one dared to think the worse of her--"

"Hush!--till another time," said the father, with a glance at Maud,
who, with wide-open eyes, in which the tears were just springing, had
been listening to all these revelations about her governess.

But Maud's tears were soon stopped, as well as this painful
conversation, by the entrance of our daily, or rather nightly, visitor
for these six weeks past, Lord Ravenel. His presence, always welcome,
was a great relief now. We never discussed family affairs before
people. The boys began to talk to Lord Ravenel: and Maud took her
privileged place on a footstool beside him. From the first sight she
had been his favourite, he said, because of her resemblance to Muriel.
But I think, more than any fancied likeness to that sweet lost face,
which he never spoke of without tenderness inexpressible, there was
something in Maud's buoyant youth--just between childhood and girlhood,
having the charms of one and the imm