the more reason that she should be removed from these romantic, reckless English she is with. It is not possible that the child can have lost her morals in a year and a half's treat. She got a dispensation from her curé I know for her Catholic religion, but she got no dispensation that I heard of from her morals; I would not have permitted such a thing."

"Have you never heard, my dear, that the capitaine is a lion when he is roused; that he falls into the rage like an Englishman when he is provoked?" "Chansons! we can have care of all that. The lion is the most generous of animals; does not La Fontaine say so? And you know she is used to those English-one of whom hanged himself because they had served him tea without sugar."

"The capitaine could never keep a sous of his pay since I had the honour of his acquaintance. He is not at all a mauvais sujet, agreed, madame. On the contrary, he is a father to the boys of his regiment since he entered it a simple soldier; but he spends on beer and pipes and flowers and children, on relieving his comrades from the Mont de Piété, and on charity to the poor, like a mauvais sujet.”

"Ten thousand reasons why the poor man should marry and give his purse to another. Once Lorlotte is mistress of his ménage all that is

changed."

Monsieur shrugged his shoulders expressively, as if with a lively realization of that obligation. "Ah! Well, also, Paulette, you are a charming intriguante, a Princess de Benvenuto; my wife, I felicitate you upon it. It is necessary that it is quite equal to me, to Lorlotte, and to the capitaine, since you wish it."

"Without doubt," acquiesced madame, coolly, and with entire conviction," and I have need that you bring the capitaine to me to-morrow in order that he may be made au fait to my views."

"Certainly, madame; I shall seek him out at his café or his crémerie, if he is not in funds. We will take a little turn on the Boulevards: our styles suit: there are never so many dames look aside at me, flash a glance of approval at-my boot, shall I say, Paulette? as when I walk with a moustache grise, putting forth the paw of a polar bear. Ah! there was such a grand dame descending from her carriage in La Rue Lepelletier yesterday, who gave me a smile; but that I am your devoted servant, that smile would have drawn down an angel on his knees. But you are not jealous, ma belle; the foot is yours to run your errands, and I shall sound the capitaine as we take our turn on the Boulevards."

"By no means," negatived madame decidedly and imperatively, but without impatience or ill-humour, nay, she was specially gracious. “Make your foot as pretty as you please, Louis; that is your forte. I am not so bête as to quarrel with it. More than that I know it is my member, and, of course, other women envy me the possession of it. What did I marry for? But don't meddle in my matter of proposing his marriage to the capitaine. Mind your own affairs, my son. Hark! There is my bell." And madame gathered up her work and descended like a bee to hum over

the decanting of whole jars of heliotrope and attar of roses, the filling of little façons, the mere waftings of perfume on handkerchiefs and gloves, doing all with conscious, consummate address, the exercise of which was in itself happiness; while monsieur, like a butterfly, caught up his embroidered cap, exchanged his dressing gown for his dress coat, and sauntered out to flutter and flaunt and show off his pretty face and figure, which were part of madame's investments, and served her after their kind, by appearing in any public garden, or at any spectacle or bourgeois ball which might be worthy of their presence.

At the same hour next afternoon the capitaine reported himself duly in the boudoir at the entresol in obedience to the summons of the cousin, for whom he had much respect and some fear.

The capitaine was just such a military man as M. Dupont had described, about the antipodes of the popular English idea of a Frenchman : unmistakeably elderly, heavy, yet gaunt, so accustomed to face dangers and disagreeables in a long life of discipline, that he did everything, good and bad, with almost the same imperturbability of mien, stiff and stark in his dark blue uniform and high collar as the effigy of a man, unless when he blazed out in a Gallic childishness of passion, during which he was as dangerous to himself as to his neighbours.

Madame was the capitaine's junior by five years, as one counts the years of a man's life, but she was his senior by a century in worldly wisdom. She knew him well, took a family pride in his rank, his red riband, his distinctions, his courage and simplicity; as in her catholicity of nature she took a pride in the good looks and bonhomie of her butterfly husband. She had helped the capitaine, Denis le Froy, before now, got him out of his spendthrift scrapes, and made a clear way for his soldier's tramp through the thicket of difficulties which hedge in a man whose very sous burn his pocket, until she had a right to counsel and direct him, and the capitaine, honest and honourable, admitted the right.

Madame, without persiflage and in strong terms, made out her case and her point. She did not spare the capitaine, while she did not omit the capabilities and good qualities of Lorlotte.

She convicted the poor capitaine, standing at attention on her own parquetted floor, disconcerted, troubled, all but shamed, he was too pure a man to be out and out ashamed before her,-of mature age, of want of provision for the future. For example, he would need a nurse some day, perhaps soon, for he had suffered from yellow fever at Guadaloupe, cholera at Berbice, frost-bite in the Crimea, and ague near Solferino, and not without leaving their traces behind them; and unless he went permanently into the hospital, or depended on one of the blessed sisters, who was to look after him? His mother had died when he was a little fellow, his sisters were long married, and not having had the benefit of madame's advice in marriage, had wedded a couple of roturiers, needy and disreputable, and cared little for him, save to accept his gifts and strip him of as much of his pension as he was foolish enough to give them.

Would the capitaine not like to have two little apartments which he could call his own after all his wanderings, where he could retire when he was not in spirits for the barrack company, where he could rear his flowers on trellises in boxes in the windows or on his stove-a stove of his own, by which he might smoke and study his treatises on fortification and military memoirs without molestation? Would he not like a boy and girl of his own to bear his name, to enter the regiment as he had done, and rise to be a general, and to be dutiful to him, fond of him, and to mend his collars and sew on his buttons, and play écarté with him, and smooth the way to his seeing the priest, when her mother's eyes grew dim and her memory failed? In the meantime Lorlotte would be as gay as a bird, fluttering under his wing; and in the summer, when madame took her holiday, her one holiday in the year, they would all go together, monsieur and she, the capitaine and Lorlotte, to spend the day at Versailles or St. Cloud, to see the gardens or the manufactory of porcelain, and dine in the forest or the meadows.

The capitaine heard his life in its landmarks pulled up and laid down afresh without resistance; he even assented submissively, "Oui, oui, that is true;" and warmed into a sudden ruddy glow which seemed out of proportion to the occasion, at the cunning mention of the flowers and the children. Still he said candidly, " But, madame, will Mademoiselle Lorlotte put up with the pipe, and the comrades, and certain rough phrases we've grown into the use of? I could not give them up at once; there are some of them I might not give up-ever."

"My dear cousin, Lorlotte is an obedient, affectionate child, more liberal than most girls, though she is also confirmed, and believes and worships as a good Catholic." Madame assured him, "It is understood that all bachelors reform and become family men and Christians when they marry; but you have so little to reform by comparison, that the reformation may be by degrees."

"But, madame my cousin, will Lorlotte bear with me when I am a madman? You know I do not mean it, and I do not think I would harm her; but I might frighten the poor child beside herself, notwithstanding." And the big, grey fellow fumbled with his belt, moved to being stonily abashed and distressed.

Madame smiled her superior smile, and waved her hand, dismissing the Quixotic scruple. "Lorlotte has been accustomed to the English moods like the English fogs; do you think she will mind your thunderstorms, my old boy? And although it were so, she is out in the world alone, earning her bread. Say, do you not think there is more in the world, you who have seen its vices and crimes from east to west, to hurt an unprotected orphan girl, body and soul, than the idle blast, soon spent, of a few furious words and acts?"

"I believe it, I believe it, my good madame, and I thank you with all my heart." The capitaine took the propitiation gratefully, and with manifest relief. "You trust me; I hope that I may never abuse your trust,

and I think that I might make it up to her. But again, will not mademoiselle expect more than I can give her? You know that I am as poor Sacré! I can barely afford her food and clothes. Where all the fine cachmeres and silks, mirrors, and consoles like those around me, are to come from, for my life I cannot tell. We can have no better ménage than a student's den.

as a rat, that I have not made hoards.

"To begin with, my capitaine," madame premised her anxious kinsman, "Lorlotte will mend all that in the cracking of the joint of a forefinger. She is as sensible as a grandmother, that cricket of a girl. I should not wonder though you were to end the rich man of the family, and to leave behind you a hundred thousand francs to endow a military college when you are done with your fortune, and have provided for your children."

The capitaine laughed at that climax a hoarse laugh, and the interview terminated in madame's having her will, and getting carte blanche from the capitaine to bring Lorlotte to Paris to marry him.

CHAPTER II.

THE INGRATITUDE OF THE WORLD AND THE CONTUMACY OF LORLOTTE-MONSIEUR HYACINTH STEPS UPON THE SCENE AND AMAZES MADAME AND HER WORLD.

LORLOTTE Was come. And without so much as a private conversation with madame, Lorlotte knew she was brought to Paris for a purpose; the first time the capitaine's name was mentioned she guessed the purpose, and alas for madame's pet scheme and the capitaine's matrimonial prospects, she made up her mind to have nothing to say to him; so far had English communication corrupted French good manners. But Lorlotte was too wise, and, poor child, she was too dependent, to fly in the face of the great woman, Madame Dupont. Lorlotte would keep her own council and enjoy the season, the sweetest of the four, well expressed by the "grown green again" of its French description, reverderies—and reverderies in Paris. Without committing herself, Lorlotte was not quite ingenuous, disinterested, regardless of consequences; but what will you have, though she had lived eighteen months in an English school?

Lorlotte was happy in having a face and figure which in a degree interpreted the spirit within. She was a dark, bright, espiègle child, with a child's naïveté, contending with a woman's consciousness. Her figure was small, light, exquisitely dainty, even elegant in her spring muslins, and hats and bonnets trimmed and manufactured by her own lissome fingers, anticipating the season in their adornment of a single wild rose, a spray of hawthorn, a little plume of lilac. Her face was small too, and fine-featured in its youthful roundness, with delicate, slightly contracted, very expressive brown brows over violet eyes, a tinge of poppy red in the clear brown of her cheeks, a dimpled cleft cherry for a mouth, with its stone cleft for teeth.

You may observe that Madame Dupont had said not a word of Lorlotte's personal attractions to the capitaine. In the first place, they had nothing to do with the advantages of the match in madame's eyes; in the second, if they weighed at all in a man's foolish fancy, they would weigh with double weight coming upon him unexpectedly.

The effect which Lorlotte's attractions really had on the capitaine when they were formally presented to each other, and Lorlotte had executed her school-girl bow in return to the capitaine's salute, was not only that the capitaine was enslaved, but struck dumb in his slavery; while Lorlotte, the heedless, hard-hearted girl,-for young girls have at once. the kindest and the most cruel of hearts in their inexperience and ignorance, laughed at him, turned up her fine little nose at him, set herself coolly to mock and make a cat's-paw of him, and as if that were not bad enough, privately to tease and vex him. Not only was there nothing in the capitaine to catch a girl's eye at first sight; there was not even anything to make him respectable to the sharp eyes of her cupidity. "The man is as poor as a Franciscan," Lorlotte exclaimed to herself in derision. "I heard him borrow a five-franc piece from madame the other day, and she told him to see that he made a note of it and paid her. I should have to work for him and cook for him. Perhaps I should have to take pupils again, when he went on half-pay or lost his month's income at a lottery. I suppose I am intended to serve as his bread-winner in his old age and infirmities," meditated Lorlotte saucily. "No, thank you, madame, I would rather not. I should prefer at least the hope of a strong arm to work for me and to lean upon, if not a heavy purse for me to empty, or the sympathies of a grand passion like what the English are not ashamed to speak of as coming even before marriage and lasting all the life afterwards."

But Lorlotte was not rebellious in the preliminaries before the capitaine's shyness had yielded to more energetic impulses, and caused him to empower madame to cross the rubicon and make his proposal, which was quite an understood thing, in form for him. Such behaviour on Lorlotte's part would have been regarded as an outrage on a young girl's sense of propriety, almost of decency, and would have been sufficient provo cation to make her be packed off in dire disgrace back to her verbs and her scales at Boulogne. And Lorlotte dearly loved a holiday, above all a holiday in Paris in May; had a natural distaste to the comparative isolation, self-restraint, and drudgery of her school-room (though she was a favourite both with principals and pupils), and shrank from disgrace. So Lorlotte finessed, laughed, sparkled all over, protested, -and permitted the capitaine daily to stand sentry at her elbow, accepted his daily bouquets in neatly cut paper bouquetiers, inscribed in a stiff handwriting with fine flourishes, "the sweetest to the most sweet," and walked abroad with him and madame to church and market.

But madame was a shrewd woman, and far-sighted. As she had said, she saw through Lorlotte's pretended demureness and real evasions. She