cord. At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back,
overflowed her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them
glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her pale cheeks.

Colonel d'Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal Soult was
repelling an English invasion of Bearn; and d'Aiglemont, the bearer of
the Emperor's orders to the Marshal, seized the opportunity of taking
his wife as far as Tours to leave her with an elderly relative of his
own, far away from the dangers threatening Paris.

Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of Tours, over the
bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped at last before the old mansion
of the _ci-devant_ Marquise de Listomere-Landon.

The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, pale face, and
shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies who still seem to wear
the paniers of the eighteenth century, and affects caps of an extinct
mode. They are nearly always caressing in their manners, as if the
heyday of love still lingered on for these septuagenarian portraits
of the age of Louis Quinze, with the faint perfume of _poudre a la
marechale_ always clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and
less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well and talk
still better, their laughter comes more readily for an old memory than
for a new jest--the present intrudes upon them.

When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de Listomere-Landon
(to give her the title which she was soon to resume) the arrival of a
nephew whom she had not seen since the outbreak of the war with Spain,
the old lady took off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the _Galerie
de l'ancienne Cour_ (her favorite work), and recovered something like
youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet the
young couple there.

Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey.

"Good-morning, dear aunt," cried the Colonel, giving the old lady a
hasty embrace. "I am bringing a young lady to put under your wing.
I have come to put my treasure in your keeping. My Julie is neither
jealous nor a coquette, she is as good as an angel. I hope that she will
not be spoiled here," he added, suddenly interrupting himself.

"Scapegrace!" returned the Marquise, with a satirical glance at her
nephew.

She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a certain
kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, who stood there