id the Marquise, whose compressed lips and sparkling
eyes denoted the anger she could barely control.

'I am a most inadequate narrator, Madame--in fact, I am not sure that I
should have lent much attention to this story at all if the Queen's name
and your own had not been interwoven with it.'

'And how the Queen's, sir _I_?' cried she haughtily.

'Ah, Madame la Marquise, ask yourself how, in this terrible time in
which we live, the purest and the best are sullied by the stain of that
calumny the world sows broadcast! Is it not a feature of our age that
none can claim privilege nor immunity? Popular orators have no more
fertile theme than when showing that station, rank, high duties, even
holy cares are all maintained by creatures of mere flesh and blood,
inheritors of human frailties, heirs of mortal weakness. Cardinals have
lived whose hearts have known ambition--empresses have felt even love.'

'Monseigneur, this is enough,' said the Marquise, rising, and darting at
him a look of haughty indignation.

'Not altogether, Madame,' said he calmly, motioning her to be reseated.
'To-morrow, or next day, this scandal--for it is a scandal--will be the
talk of Paris. Whence came this youth? who is he? how came he by his
title of Chevalier? will be asked in every salon, in every cafe, at
every corner. Madame de Bauffremont's name, and one even yet higher,
will figure in these recitals. Some will suppose this, others suggest
that, and the world--the world, Madame la Marquise--will believe all!'

'My Lord Bishop,' she began, but passion so overwhelmed her that she
could not continue. Meanwhile he resumed--

'The vulgar herd, who know nothing, nor can know anything, of the
emotions, noble and generous, that sway highborn natures, who must needs
measure the highest in station by the paltry standards that apply to
their own class, will easily credit that even a Marquise may have
been interested for a youth to whom, certainly, rumour attributes
considerable merit. One word more, Madame; for as this youth, educated,
some say by no less gifted a tutor than Jean Jacques Rousseau--others
pretend by the watchful care of Count Mirabeau himself----'

'Whence, have you derived this most ingenious tissue of falsehood,
Monseigneur?' cried she passionately.

'Nay, Madame, I speak "from book" now. The Chevalier is intimately known
to Monsieur de Mirabeau--lived at one time in close companionship with
him--and is, indeed, deeply indebted