he hall quickly, in which there was much confusion--the Grand
Prieur calling out that the children should have a livre each, except
the cobbler's boy and Francezka, who were to have a gold crown.

Outside in the courtyard under the dark, starlit sky, I found Peter
with Mademoiselle Capello and Gaston Cheverny. The young girl had
regained her composure, and stood silent, pale as death and like a
criminal, before Gaston Cheverny. Like most very young men, he liked
to reprove, and to assume authority over others but little younger
than himself.

"Mademoiselle," he was saying, "you have, perhaps, forgotten me and
my brother, Monsieur Regnard Cheverny--you were too young to remember
us. But we had the honor of knowing you in Brabant when you were
little more than an infant--and our houses have always been
friendly. For that, as well as other reasons, I must exact a
promise of you. Never repeat this performance. You are but a child
yet, and this indiscretion may well be forgotten. But Mademoiselle,
you will soon be a woman--and a woman's indiscretions are not
forgotten."

All of which would have been very well from a man of forty, but was
slightly ridiculous in this peach-faced youth of twenty.

A gleam of spirit--of Madame Riano's spirit--flashed into Mademoiselle
Capello's face at this assumption on Gaston Cheverny's part.

"Monsieur Cheverny," she said, "I remember you perfectly well--also,
your brother, Monsieur Regnard Cheverny. I am older than you think,
perhaps. I even remember that I hated one of you--I can not now recall
which one--except that he or you annoyed me, when I was a child in
Brabant, at my chateau of Capello"--oh, the grand air with which she
brought out "my chateau of Capello!"--"and--and--if I act--it is none
of your business."

"It will be Madame Riano's business, though," darkly hinted Gaston
Cheverny.

At this veiled threat to tell her aunt, Mademoiselle Capello showed
she was but a child after all, for she broke down, crying:

"I will promise, Monsieur."

There was but a single coach in sight, and while Gaston Cheverny was
haranguing Mademoiselle Capello, I had engaged it to take her home.
The coachman drove up, I opened the door and invited mademoiselle to
enter. She recognized me at once, and curtsied deeply.

"Thank you, Monsieur," she said with the greatest sweetness in the
world. It was the first time she ever spoke to me--and can I ever
forget it?

"Thank you, Monsieur; I do not