The devil! pourquoir ne allez pas?" said an unmistakably English voice
from the interior of the voiture. The man set off at a trot; Ernest
sprang into his own trap.

"Au Chateau Rouge! May as well go there, eh, Emile? What a deuced pity
la chevelure doree is English!"

"I wish she were a danseuse, an actress, a fleuriste--anything one could
make his own introduction to. Confound it there's the 'heavy father,'
I'm afraid, in the case, and some rigorous mamma, or vigilant _beguine_
of a governess: but, to judge by the young lady's smiles, she'll be easy
game unless she's tremendously fenced in."

With which consolatory reflection Vaughan leaned back and lighted a
cheroot, _en route_ to spend the night as he had spent most of them for
the last ten years, till the fan had begun to be more bore than
pleasure.

II.

NINA GORDON.

"Have you been to the Hotel de Londres, Ernest?" said De Concressault,
as Vaughan lounged into Tortoni's next day, where Emile and three or
four other men were drinking Seltzer and talking of how Cerisette had
beaten Vivandiere by a neck at Chantilly, or (the sport to which a
Frenchman takes much more naturally) of how well Riviere played in the
"Prix d'un Bouquet;" what a _belle taille_ la De Servans had; and what a
fool Senecterre had made of himself in the duel about Madame Viardot.

"Of course I have," said Vaughan. "The name is Gordon--general name
enough in England. They were gone to the Expiatoire, the portiere told
me. There _is_ the heavy father, as I feared, and a quasi-governess
acting duenna; they're travelling with another family, whose name I
could not hear: the woman said 'C'etait beaucoup trop dur pour les
levres.' I dare say they're some Brummagem people--some Fudge family or
other--on their travels. Confound it!"

"Poor Ernest," laughed De Concressault. "Some gold hair has bewitched
him, and instead of finding it belongs to a danseuse, or a married
woman, or a fleuriste of the Palais Royal, or something attainable, he
finds it turn into an unapproachable English girl, with no end of
outlying sentries round her, who'll fire at the first familiar
approach."

"It is a hard case," said De Kerroualle, a dashing fellow in one of the
"Regiments de famille." "Never mind, mon ami; 'contre fortune bon
coeur,' you know: it'll be more fun to devastate one of our countrymen's
inviolate strongholds than to conquer where the white flag's already
held out. Halloa! here's a compa