catching the last beams of
departing day.

"I suppose its only tenants now are ghosts," said Miss Randolph. "I can
imagine that I see wicked Catherine de Medicis glaring at us from that
high window near the tower." It was an impressive introduction to one of
the greatest monuments of France, and after we had gazed a little longer
I turned the car and drove back into the courtyard of the Grand Hotel de
Blois, where tame partridges pecked at grain upon the ground, many dogs
gambolled, and foreign birds bickered and chattered in huge cages. At
the entrance was the Frenchman, all eyes and eyelashes, darting forward
to help Miss Randolph from her car.

I grew weary to nausea of this shallow, pretentious ass, with no
knowledge of his own land. It began to shape itself in my mind that
though a gentleman in exterior he was the common or garden
fortune-hunter, or perhaps worse. Finding a beautiful American girl
travelling _en automobile_, chaperoned only by a rather foolish and
pliable aunt, he fancied her an easy prey to his elaborate manners and
eyelashes. Knowing we were coming to the "Grand," I had directed Almond
to drive the Napier to the "France," and my duty for the day being over,
I was about to go across to change and dine, when I saw Miss Randolph in
the hall. She was annoyed, she told me, to find that the best suite of
rooms were taken by some rich Englishman and his daughter, and she had
to put up with second-rate ones. "Poor Monsieur Talleyrand," she ended,
"has little more than a cupboard to sleep in." Talleyrand, then, was the
name of the Frenchman. "Oh, is he stopping here?" I asked. "He said he
was going on at once to Biarritz."

"He's changed his mind," said she. "He's so impressed with Chambord that
he says it's a pity not to see all the other chateaux, which are so
important in the history of his own country. He asked Aunt Mary if we
should mind his going at the same time with us. So _of course_ she said
we wouldn't." All this, if you please, with the most candid air of
guilelessness, which I actually believe was genuine.

"She said _what_?" I demanded, quite forgetting my part in my rage.

"She said," repeated Miss Randolph slowly and with dignity, "that we
would not mind his seeing the chateaux when we see them. Why should we
mind? The poor young man won't do us any harm, and it's quite right of
him to want to see his own castles, because, anyhow, they're a great
deal more his than ours."

I was sti