ny, a younger brother, and by no means so great in estate and
consideration as Regnard Cheverny, she was next in kindness. While to
Regnard, who declared his passion for her in every look, she was
smilingly distant, cool and radiant, like a full moon on a December
night.

On the fifth day after our arrival in Koenigsberg we set out on our
long journey toward Brabant. Madame Riano and Mademoiselle Capello,
with their two waiting maids, were in the traveling chaise, with old
Peter on the box. Sometimes we could get a good saddle horse for
Mademoiselle Capello and then she often did the whole day's travel on
horseback. Count Saxe, the Chevernys and I were the escort, with
Beauvais and Regnard Cheverny's servant behind.

The season was remarkably fine, and we made the journey in extreme
comfort. How wise it is, when one has had an irreparable loss, to
prescribe travel as a means of resting the tired heart! The ever
present necessities of the hour, the quick and constant changes,
the dangers--for there are many dangers on the highways of the
kingdoms--the good or bad inn which awaits one--all these small
things fill up a great horizon. All the politics of Europe sank into
nothing when it became a question of supper and beds at the end of a
hard day's journey.

Madame Riano proved herself, as always, to have a basis of good sense,
and much liberality. She never haggled over anything, albeit she was a
Scot; was good-humored generally, or if ill-humored was diverting to
everybody except the victim of her wrath. I noticed she was much less
dictatorial to Mademoiselle Capello than one would expect; and I
shrewdly suspected that Madame Riano knew Francezka was of a nature
not to be driven, and chose rather to abate some of her arrogance
before this young girl. One thing was plain: Mademoiselle Capello
assumed all the honors of the chatelaine of her Brabant chateau, and
gave us to understand that she was mistress there, _de facto_ if not
_de jure_; for she would not become actual mistress of her estates or
herself until her eighteenth birthday. Madame Riano, talking once with
Count Saxe and me in the garden of an inn, on a pleasant morning,
before it was time to start, told us some particulars of these
matters.

"My niece and all her estates were left in my charge by my brother--God
rest his soul. And I think neither has been mismanaged. But the
Kirkpatricks are all given sense to manage themselves at a very early
age--God ha