THE PROFESSOR OF ELOQUENCE

"My name," she said, "is Claire Agnew. But since we lived long in
Provence and Spanish Roussillon, my father, being learned in that
speech, called me most often Euphrasia or Euphra, being, as he said,
'the light of his eyes'"!

"Then you are English, and a heretic?" said the young man, while the
Professor, having discharged his papers into the drawer of a cabinet,
already full and running over, bent his ear to the breast of the old
man.

"I am Scottish, and you are the heretic!" said the girl, with spirit.

"I am no heretic--I am of the Faith!" said the young man.

"The Faith of treaty-breakers and murderers!"

She knit her fingers and looked at him defiantly--perhaps, if the truth
must be told, more in anger than in sorrow.

The voice of the Professor of Eloquence broke in upon them.

"Young man," he said, "you have surprised a secret which is not
mine--much less yours. Be off at once to your uncle, the Cardinal
d'Albret, and to your friend's father Launay, the ex-provost of the
merchants. Get three passports--for me, for my daughter Claire,
and--for my nephew----"

"What nephew?" said the youth, rubbing the ear which the Professor had
pulled.

"One I have adopted recently!" said the Professor gravely, "a certain
worthless loon, who came up hither seeking what was not his--a
sword-cane and a pistol, and who found that which, God knows, belongs to
neither of us--an uncomfortable possession in these days, a Huguenot
maiden with eyes like a flame of fire!"

"They are more like pansies!" said the young man doggedly.

"How do you know? How dare you? Is she not my daughter?"

"Aye, master, she is, of course, your daughter if you say so"--the voice
of the Abbe John was uncertain. He did not like the Professor claiming
so much--and he beginning to be bald too. What have bald pates to do
with pretty young girls? Even thus he growled low to himself.

"Eh, what's that?" the Professor caught him up. "Be off--it is to save
her life, and you are a young blade who should never refuse an
adventure, specially when at last it gives you a chance to be taken for
the relative of a respectable man----"

"And the cousin of this fair maid, your--daughter?"

"Well, and have I not a good right to a daughter of my own? Once on a
day I was married, bonds and bands, parchments and paperings. For ten
years I endured my pain. Well might I have had a daughter, and of her
age too, had it not been my h