as big as
your stables here--quite a choice of rooms for you. You must learn the
name of our house--Maison Rouge. Our nearest town is Metz. We are within a
walk of the beautiful River Moselle. And when we want a change we have
only to take the railway to the frontier, and find ourselves in Germany."

Listening, so far, with a very bewildered face, Francis started and
changed color when my wife reached the end of her last sentence.
"Germany?" he repeated.

"Yes. Does Germany remind you of anything?"

The hostler's eyes looked down sadly on the ground. "Germany reminds me of
my wife," he replied.

"Indeed! How?"

"She once told me she had lived in Germany--long before I knew her--in the
time when she was a young girl."

"Was she living with relations or friends?"

"She was living as governess in a foreign family."

"In what part of Germany?"

"I don't remember, ma'am. I doubt if she told me."

"Did she tell you the name of the family?"

"Yes, ma'am. It was a foreign name, and it has slipped my memory long
since. The head of the family was a wine grower in a large way of
business--I remember that."

"Did you hear what sort of wine he grew? There are wine growers in our
neighborhood. Was it Moselle wine?"

"I couldn't say, ma'am, I doubt if I ever heard."

There the conversation dropped. We engaged to communicate with Francis
Raven before we left England, and took our leave. I had made arrangements
to pay our round of visits to English friends, and to return to Maison
Rouge in the summer. On the eve of departure, certain difficulties in
connection with the management of some landed property of mine in Ireland
obliged us to alter our plans. Instead of getting back to our house in
France in the Summer, we only returned a week or two before Christmas.
Francis Raven accompanied us, and was duly established, in the nominal
capacity of stable keeper, among the servants at Maison Rouge.

Before long, some of the objections to taking him into our employment,
which I had foreseen and had vainly mentioned to my wife, forced
themselves on our attention in no very agreeable form. Francis Raven
failed (as I had feared he would) to get on smoothly with his
fellow-servants They were all French; and not one of them understood
English. Francis, on his side, was equally ignorant of French. His
reserved manners, his melancholy temperament, his solitary ways--all told
against him. Our servants called him "the English Bear."