oldly, searching her provoking eyes.

"She is the lucky lady!" said Olivia in a low voice, and then a pause.
She trifled with her book.

"What I wonder is that you could have a word to say of plea for this
that surely is the blackest of his kind."

"Not admirable, by my faith! no; not admirable," he confessed, "but I
would be the last to blame him for intemperately loving you. There,
I think his honesty was beyond dispute; there he might have found
salvation. That he should have done me the honour to desire my removal
from your presence was flattering to my vanity, and a savage tribute to
your power, Mademoiselle Olivia."

"Oh!" cried Olivia, "you cannot deceive me, Count Victor. It is odd that
all your sex must stick up for each other in the greatest villanies."

"Not the greatest, Mademoiselle Olivia," said Count Victor with an
inclination; "he might have been indifferent to your charms, and that
were the one thing unforgivable. But soberly, I consider his folly
scarce bad enough for the punishment of your eternal condemnation."

"This man thinks lightly indeed of me," thought Olivia. "Drimdarroch has
a good advocate," said she shortly, "and the last I would have looked
for in his defence was just yourself."

"Drimdarroch?" he repeated, in a puzzled tone.

"Will you be telling me that you do not know?" she said. "For what did
Simon MacTaggart harass our household?"

"I have been bold enough to flatter myself; I had dared to think--"

She stopped him quickly, blushing. "You know he was Drimdarroch, Count
Victor," said she, with some conviction.

He jumped to his feet and bent to stare at her, his face all wrought
with astonishment.

"_Mon Dieu!_ Mademoiselle, you do not say the two were one? And
yet--and yet--yes, _par dieu!_ how blind I have been; there is every
possibility."

"I thought you knew it," said Olivia, much relieved, "and felt anything
but pleased at your seeming readiness in the circumstances to let me be
the victim of my ignorance. I had too much trust in the wretch."

"Women distrust men too much in the general and too little in
particular. And you knew?" asked Count Victor. .

"I learned to-day," said Olivia, "and this was my bitter schooling."

She passed him the letter. He took it and read aloud:

"I have learned now," said the writer, "the reason for your black
looks at Monsher the wine merchant that has a Nobleman's Crest upon his
belongings. It is because he has come to look fo