Garneau or Parkman. The lady might have romanced indeed, with glib
falseness gilding picturesque invention, and he would not have detected
it.

As it was, the truth remained sufficiently high coloured. He listened,
he apprehended, but he could not see that it mattered.

"So now," remarked mademoiselle, trailing her large firm white hand
through the water and knitting her firm black brows still closer, "I
have brought the story up to the appearance on the scene of my brother,
whom you have met, no doubt pondered over, perhaps shrunk from."

"No, no!" cried Ringfield. "You mistake. I was conscious only of
having no right to enter."

"Ah--I could see, I could see. Poor Henry! He is the victim of many
delusions. One--that he is a great invalid and cannot leave his room,
that room you saw him in to-day. Another--that we are properly De
Clairvilles, but that we have somehow lost the prefix, the 'De,' in
course of years, and that a Bill may have to pass in Parliament to
permit us using it legally. There has been already in this antiquated
province a case very similar to ours, but it was a genuine case, which
ours is not. My brother owns the largest collection of old French and
old French-Canadian memoirs and books in the country, I believe, and it
may be that out of constant poring over them has come this ruling
passion, this dominant idea, to prove himself a seigneur, and more, a
noble, _grand seigneur de France_! Voila! but I forget, Mr. Ringfield
hardly speaks French, and I--hate the sound of it, only it crops out
sometimes."

"But why--and you--how do _you_ speak such good English? I have been
wondering over that much more than over the case of your brother."

Ringfield, as he asked the question, stopped paddling and sat down
cautiously opposite his companion. Her dark brows clouded even more
and the warm colouring of her face went white; she again resembled the
fury who had lectured the unfortunate pedant in the arm-chair.

"I knew you would ask that. Every one does. I suppose it is to be
expected. Well then, my mother was English and I was educated at a
mixed school, ladies' school at Sorel, not a convent. I was quick at
the language--_voila_!"

"Perhaps it was rude in me to ask. I believe I am deficient in
manners; my friends often tell me so. But you spoke such _good_
English; better far than mine."

"That would not be difficult. You have the accent strange to me, that
of the West. Then