r. He was wondering to himself what Marcelline really
meant; whether she knew of the wonders concealed behind the tapestry, or
was only teasing him a little in the kind but queer way she sometimes
did.

"Marcelline," he said suddenly at last, "I don't understand you."

"Do you understand yourself, my little Monsieur?" said Marcelline. "Do
any of us understand ourselves? all the different selves that each of us
is?"

"No," said Hugh, "I daresay we don't. It is very puzzling; it's all very
puzzling."

"In the country where I lived when I was a little girl," began
Marcelline, but Jeanne interrupted her.

"Have you never been there since, Marcelline?" she asked.

Marcelline smiled again her funny smile.

"Oh dear, yes," she said; "often, very often. I should not have been
near so happy as I am if I had not often visited that country."

"Dear me," exclaimed Jeanne, "how very queer! I had no idea of that. You
haven't been there for a great many years any way, Marcelline. I heard
mamma telling a lady the other day that she never remembered your going
away, not even for a day--never since she was born."

"Ah!" said Marcelline, "but, Mademoiselle, we don't always know what
even those nearest us do. I might have gone to that country without your
mamma knowing. Sometimes we are far away when those beside us think us
close to them."

"Yes," said Hugh, looking up suddenly, "that is true, Marcelline."

What she said made him remember Dudu's remark about Jeanne the night
before, that she was far, far away, and he began to feel that Marcelline
understood much that she seldom alluded to.

But Jeanne took it up differently. She jumped on to Marcelline's knee
and pretended to beat her.

"You naughty little old woman," she said; "you very naughty little old
woman, to say things like that to puzzle me--just what you know I don't
like. Go back to your own country, naughty old Marcelline; go back to
your fairyland, or wherever it was you came from, if you are going to
tease poor little Jeanne so."

"_Tease_ you, Mademoiselle?" Marcelline repeated.

"Yes, tease me," insisted Jeanne. "You know I hate people to go on
about things I don't understand. Now you're to tell us a story at once,
do you hear, Marcelline?"

Hugh said nothing, but he looked up in Marcelline's face with his grave
blue eyes, and the old woman smiled again. She seemed as if she was
going to speak, when just then a servant came upstairs to say that
Jeanne'