and it was always a surprise to her to find that they knew so
many nice people. A few days after the adventurous visit to Mont St.
Michel she made the acquaintance of one whom she learned to love
dearly, and about whom there hung a halo of romance that charmed the
girl.

"Her story is known to me," Mademoiselle Therese explained on the way
to her house, "and I will tell it you--in confidence, of course." She
paused a moment to impress Barbara and to arrange her thoughts, for she
dearly loved a romantic tale, and would add garnishing by the way if
she did not consider it had enough.

"She is the daughter of a professor," she began presently. "They used
to live in Rouen--gray, beautiful, many-churched Rouen." The lady
glanced sideways at her companion to see if her rhetoric were
impressive enough, and Barbara waited gravely for her to continue,
though wondering if mademoiselle had ever read _The Lady of Shalott_.

"An officer in one of the regiments stationed in the quaint old town,"
pursued mademoiselle, "saw the professor's fair young daughter, and
fell rapturously in love with her. Whereupon they became betrothed."

Barbara frowned a little. The setting of the story was too ornate, and
seemed almost barbarous.

"And then?" she asked impatiently.

"Then--ah, then!" sighed the story-teller, who thought she was making a
great impression--"then the sorrow came. As soon as his family knew,
they were grievously angry, furiously wrathful, because she had no
_dot_; and when she heard of their fury and wrath she nobly refused to
marry him until he gained their consent. 'Never,' she cried" (and it
was obvious that here mademoiselle was relying on her own invention),
"'never will I marry thee against thy parents' wish.'"

She paused, and drew a long breath before proceeding. "A short time
after this, the regiment of her lover was ordered out to India, in
which pestiferous country he took a malicious fever and expired. She
has no relatives left now, though so frail and delicate, but lives with
an old maid in a very small domicile. She is cultivated to an extreme,
and is so fond of music that, though her house is too small to admit of
the pianoforte entering by the door, she had it introduced by the
window of the _salon_, which had to be unbricked--the window, I mean.
She has, moreover, three violins--one of which belonged to her
ever-to-be-lamented fiance--and, though she is too frail to stand, she
will sit, whe