t me to the
dining-room."

She took the arm of Pierre, and in a merry mood, which brought back
sweet memories of the past, their voices echoed again along the old
corridors of the Manor House as they proceeded to the great dining-room,
where the rest of the company were assembling.

The dinner was rather a stately affair, owing to the determination of
Felix Beaudoin to do especial honor to the return home of the family.
How the company ate, talked, and drank at the hospitable table need not
be recorded here. The good Cure's face, under the joint influence of
good humor and good cheer, was full as a harvest moon. He rose at last,
folded his hands, and slowly repeated "agimus gratias." After dinner
the company withdrew to the brilliantly lighted drawing-room, where
conversation, music, and a few games of cards for such as liked them,
filled up a couple of hours longer.

The Lady de Tilly, seated beside Pierre Philibert on the sofa, conversed
with him in a pleasant strain, while the Cure, with a couple of old
dowagers in turbans, and an old veteran officer of the colonial marine,
long stranded on a lee shore, formed a quartette at cards.

These were steady enthusiasts of whist and piquet, such as are only to
be found in small country circles where society is scarce and amusements
few. They had met as partners or antagonists, and played, laughed, and
wrangled over sixpenny stakes and odd tricks and honors, every week for
a quarter of a century, and would willingly have gone on playing till
the day of judgment without a change of partners if they could have
trumped death and won the odd trick of him.

Pierre recollected having seen these same old friends seated at the same
card-table during his earliest visits to the Manor House. He recalled
the fact to the Lady de Tilly, who laughed and said her old friends had
lived so long in the company of the kings and queens that formed the
paste-board Court of the Kingdom of Cocagne that they could relish no
meaner amusement than one which royalty, although mad, had the credit of
introducing.

Amelie devoted herself to the task of cheering her somewhat moody
brother. She sat beside him, resting her hand with sisterly affection
upon his shoulder, while in a low, sweet voice she talked to him,
adroitly touching those topics only which she knew awoke pleasurable
associations in his mind. Her words were sweet as manna and full of
womanly tenderness and sympathy, skilfully wrapped i