uest for the evening. Like the true Spaniard
that he was, Don Jose Martinez fell deeply in love with Honore's sister.
Then there came Agricola leading in Palmyre. There were others, for the
Grandissime mansion was always full of Grandissimes; but this was the
central group.

In this house Palmyre grew to womanhood, retaining without interruption
the place into which she seemed to enter by right of indisputable
superiority over all competitors,--the place of favorite attendant to
the sister of Honore. Attendant, we say, for servant she never seemed.
She grew tall, arrowy, lithe, imperial, diligent, neat, thorough,
silent. Her new mistress, though scarcely at all her senior, was yet
distinctly her mistress; she had that through her Fusilier blood;
experience was just then beginning to show that the Fusilier Grandissime
was a superb variety; she was a mistress one could wish to obey. Palmyre
loved her, and through her contact ceased, for a time, at least, to be
the pet leopard she had been at the Cannes Brulees.

Honore went away to Paris only sixty days after Palmyre entered the
house. But even that was not soon enough.

"'Sieur Frowenfel'," said Aurora, in her recital, "Palmyre, she never
tole me dad, _mais_ I am shoe, _shoe_ dad she fall in love wid Honore
Grandissime. 'Sieur Frowenfel', I thing dad Honore Grandissime is one
bad man, ent it? Whad you thing, 'Sieur Frowenfel'?"

"I think, as I said to you the last time, that he is one of the best, as
I know that he is one of the kindest and most enlightened gentlemen in
the city," said the apothecary.

"Ah, 'Sieur Frowenfel'! ha, ha!"

"That is my conviction."

The lady went on with her story.

"Hanny'ow, I know she _con_tinue in love wid 'im all doze ten year'
w'at 'e been gone. She baig Mademoiselle Grandissime to wrad dad ledder
to my papa to ass to kip her two years mo'."

Here Aurora carefully omitted that episode which Doctor Keene had
related to Frowenfeld,--her own marriage and removal to Fausse Riviere,
the visit of her husband to the city, his unfortunate and finally fatal
affair with Agricola, and the surrender of all her land and slaves to
that successful duellist.

M. de Grapion, through all that, stood by his engagement concerning
Palmyre; and, at the end of ten years, to his own astonishment,
responded favorably to a letter from Honore's sister, irresistible for
its goodness, good sense, and eloquent pleading, asking leave to detain
Palmyre tw