atched
and cared for."

Barbara looked up quickly. She wondered if she dared interrupt and say
she did not think it was such an ideal place, when the lawyer spoke
before her.

"_Parbleu!_" he said with a laugh, "I should prefer the convent! There
at least the religion is honest, but--with those ladies you
mention--there is deceit. They pretend to be what they are not."

"Oh, but no!" Mademoiselle Therese exclaimed. "Why, they _are_
Protestants."

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.

"Believe it if you will, my dear friend, but we lawyers know most
things, and I know that what I say is true. When my little Helene goes
to school she shall not go to such. Meanwhile, I am content to keep
her at home."

"So am I," murmured Madame Dubois. "Schools are such vulgar places,
are they not?"

But Barbara, to whom the remark was addressed, was too much interested
in this last piece of news to do more than answer shortly. For if what
the lawyer said were true--and he did not seem a man likely to make
mistakes--then Alice Meynell might really have sufficient cause to be
miserable, and Barbara wondered when she would see her again, which was
to be sooner than she expected.

CHAPTER XI.

BARBARA TURNS PLOTTER.

The day after her expedition to Dol, Barbara saw Alice Meynell again,
and in rather a strange meeting-place--namely, the public bath-house.
The house in which the Loires lived was an old-fashioned one, and had
no bath, and at first Barbara had looked with horror upon the
bath-house. She had become more reconciled to it of late, and, as it
was the only means of obtaining a hot bath, had tried to make the best
of it. It was a funny little place, entered by a narrow passage, at
one end of which there was a booking-office, and a swing door, where
you could buy a "season-ticket," or pay for each visit separately.

On one side of the passage there were rows of little bathrooms,
containing what Barbara thought the narrowest most uncomfortable baths
imaginable. A boy in felt slippers ran up and down, turning on the
water, and a woman sat working at a little table at one end--"to see
you did not steal the towels," Barbara declared. It was here she met
Alice Meynell, under the care of an old attendant, whom the girl said
she knew was a spy sent to report everything she said or did.

"Mademoiselle, who came with me to call the other day, has taken a
great dislike to you," Alice whispered hurriedly in passin