eathlessly, while Desiree laughingly attended to her dishevelled hair.

"Why not?"

"Because you still make your own dresses and teach dancing," replied
the pupil, with a quick sigh at the thought of some smart bursch in the
Prussian contingent.

"Ah, but Charles will return a colonel, and I shall bow to you in a
silk dress from a chaise and pair--come, left foot first. You are not so
tired as you think you are."

For those that are busy, time flies quickly enough. And there is nothing
more absorbing than keeping the wolf from the door, else assuredly the
hungry thousands would find time to arise and rend the overfed few.

August succeeded a hot July and brought with it Sebastian's curt letter.
Sebastian himself--that shadowy father--returned to his home a few
hours later. He was not alone, for a heavier step followed his into the
passage, and Desiree, always quick to hear and see and act, coming to
the head of the stairs, perceived her father looking upwards towards
her, while his companion in rough sailor's clothes turned to lay aside
the valise he had carried on his shoulder.

Mathilde was close behind Desiree, and Sebastian kissed his daughters
with that cold repression of manner which always suggested a strenuous
past in which the emotions had been relinquished for ever as an
indulgence unfit for a stern and hard-bitten age.

"I took him away and now return him," said the sailor coming forward.
Desiree had always known that it was Louis, but Mathilde gave a little
start at the sound of the neat clipping French in the mouth of an
educated Frenchman so rarely heard in Dantzig--so rarely heard in all
broad France to-day.

"Yes--that is true," answered Sebastian, turning to him with a sudden
change of manner. There was that in voice and attitude which his hearers
had never noted before, although Charles had often evoked something
approaching it. It seemed to indicate that, of all the people with whom
they had seen their father hold intercourse, Louis d'Arragon was the
only man who stood upon equality with him.

"That is true--and at great risk to yourself," he said, not assigning,
however, so great an importance to personal danger as men do in these
careful days. As he spoke, he took Louis by the arm and by a gesture
invited him to precede him upstairs with a suggestion of camaraderie
somewhat startling in one usually so cold and formal as Antoine
Sebastian, the dancing-master of the Frauengasse.

"I was wr