four
years now she had been required to abstain from visiting Paris or the
court, either at Versailles, Marley, or St. Germains, and this
notwithstanding that her blood was of the most blue and that she
claimed connection with the most aristocratic families in France.

Truly it was an annoying thing to be young, handsome, and very well to
do--owing to her not _too_ aristocratic husband, the late baron--and
to be of the blue blood owing to her own family, and yet to be under a
cloud in consequence of a scandal--of being mixed up in an affair, a
scene, or tragedy, which it was impossible to altogether hush up. At
least she found it annoying, and, so finding it, revolted a good deal
at the ban laid on her. Still, revolt or repine as she might, Louis's
word was law in all matters of social importance, and she was forced
to bow to it, in the hopes that, as time passed on, the ban might be
removed. But it was not strange, perhaps, that in so bowing, her
temper, always a hot, passionate one, had grown a little uncertain.

It did not serve to improve that temper on this hot day that, at a
moment when the _caleche_ emerged into a particularly sunny portion of
the road, unsheltered by either tree or bank, it should suddenly come
to a stop and expose her to the full glare of the sun itself.
Moreover, the jerk with which the horses were pulled up gave her a jar
which did not tend to better matters.

"What are you stopping for?" she asked angrily of one of the lackeys
who had by now jumped down from behind. "I bade you take me back as
soon as possible. And why in this broad glare? _Animal!_" and she drew
her upper lip back, showing her small white teeth.

"Pardon, my lady," the man said--he knowing the look well, and
remembering also that, before to-day, it had boded punishment for him
and his fellows--"but there is a man lying in the road, almost under
the hoofs of the horses. And his own stands by his side."

"Well! What of that? Thrust them aside and drive on. Am I to be
broiled here?"

"Pardon, my lady," the man again ventured to say submissively, "but it
is not a peasant. He looks of a better class than that."

"What is he, then, a gentleman of the _seigneurie_?" And she deigned
to lean out of the _caleche_ somewhat, as though to obtain a glance of
the person who had barred her way. "Has he been drinking?"

"I do not know, my lady. But his head is hurt. He may have been
attacked or injured by his fall. He is plainly d