arranging, with a stout hand, the priceless lace on her dress.
"Albert is coming. We brought a lantern, although it is a moon. It
is better. Besides, it is always done by those who conspire. And
Albert had his great cloak, and he fell up a step in the courtyard
and dropped the lantern, and lost it in the long grass. I left him
looking for it, in the dark. He was not afraid, my brave Albert!"

"He has the dauntless heart of his mother," murmured the Abbe,
gracefully, as he ran round the table setting the chairs in order.
He had already offered the largest and strongest to the Comtesse,
and it was creaking under her now, as she moved to set her dress in
order.

"Assuredly," she admitted, complacently. "Has not France produced a
Jeanne d'Arc and a Duchesse de Berri? It was not from his father,
at all events, that he inherited his courage. For he was a
poltroon, that man. Yes, my dear Abbe, let us be honest, and look
at life as it is. He was a poltroon, and I thought I loved him--for
two or three days only, however. And I was a child then. I was
beautiful."

"Was?" echoed the Abbe, reproachfully.

"Silence, wicked one! And you a priest."

"Even an ecclesiastic, Madame, may have eyes," he said, darkly, as
he snuffed a candle and, subsequently, gave himself a mechanical
thump on the chest, in the region of the heart.

"Then they should wear blinkers, like a horse," said Madame,