like blind, mad oxen till they bump their
stupid heads against somebody that will have them. I shouldn't wonder if
I got a second-hand husband one day, taking up with some cast-off of
yours."

"Peggy, these things do not flatter me; they distress me," said
Angelique genuinely.

"They wouldn't distress me. If I had your face, and your hands and arms,
and the way you carry yourself, I'd love to kill men. They have no sense
at all."

Angelique heard her grind her teeth, and exclaimed,--

"Why, Peggy, what has poor Jules done?"

"Oh, Jules!--he is nothing. I have just engaged myself to him to get rid
of him, and now I have some right to be let alone. He's only the fourth
one of your victims that I've accepted, and doctored up, and set on foot
again. I take them in rotation, and let them easily down to marrying
some girl of capacity suitable to them. And until you are married off, I
have no prospect of ever being anything but second choice."

Angelique laughed.

"Your clever tongue so fascinates men that this is all mockery, your
being second choice. But indeed I like men, Peggy; if they had not the
foolishness of falling in love."

"Angelique Saucier, when do you intend to settle in life?"

"I do not know," said the French girl slowly. "It is pleasant to be as
we are."

Peggy glanced at her through the dark.

"Do you intend to be a nun?"

"No, I have no vocation."

"Well, if you don't marry, the time will come when you'll be called an
old maid."

"That is what mama says. It is a pity to make ugly names for good
women."

"I'll be drawn and quartered before I'll be called an old maid," said
Peggy fiercely. "What difference does it make, after all, which of these
simpletons one takes for a husband? Were you ever in love with one of
them, Angelique?"

Peggy had the kind of eyes which show a disk of light in the dark, and
they revealed it as she asked this question.

"No, I think not," answered Angelique.

"You think not. You believe, to the best of your knowledge and
recollection, that such a thing has never happened to you," mocked
Peggy. And then she made a sudden pounce at Angelique's arm. "What was
the matter with you when you ran up the gallery steps, a minute ago?"

The startled girl drew in her breath with surprise, but laughed.

"It was lighter then," hinted Peggy.

"Did you see him?"

"Yes, I saw him. And I saw you coaxing him along with a bunch of roses,
for all the world like catching a