men, though urged as
strongly as the northern blast, are in vain against the marble
front of virtue. I am marble to your wishes."

"You weigh your danger as little as you do your language," observed
the seigneur. "Will you permit a trespasser, a tempter within your
grounds; a wolf, a fox, a bear within your fold?"

The advocate shrugged his shoulders and replied: "No, heaven
forbid;--and Stillyside is to me as an outer court of heaven,
wherein my ward dwells as a sort of semi-solitary angel."

"Yet angels fell, and so may she fall," interjected the seigneur
quickly.

"They did, and without a tempter, too, Monsieur Montigny," returned
the advocate, quietly; then added: "the height of heaven turned
the heads of the angels giddy."

"Girls are giddy," remarked the seigneur gravely.

"Boys are more frequently foolish," drily retorted the advocate:
"and often coming to girls for kisses, go away with cuffs. I hope
your son has neither sought for the one nor yet received the other.
But what is this son, Monsieur Montigny, that you would have me
believe to be so formidable? Is he another Lucifer, couched at my
Ward's ear, as his dark prototype once squatted at that of Eve? Or
is he Lothario alive again? Is he Leander, and are the Ottawa's
jaws a western Hellespont, with my ward and Stillyside, for Hero
and her tower?"

"Your verandah," remarked the seigneur, "is not higher than was
Hero's tower, although, I trust, your ward's virtue may be more
exalted than was Hero's. But are you aware, sir, that already my
son has had her company, alone, at midnight, on your grounds; all
others retired; she alone watching, with Claude Montigny and the
broad, full moon?"

"An actionable moon," exclaimed the lawyer, "and a decided case of
lunacy against the lovers. But, alas, sir, in this respect we have
all been sinners in our youth, and all grown wondrous righteous
with our years. Have we not ourselves, when we were young,--ay,
and upon inclement winter nights too, courted brown peasant girls
beneath both stars and moon? What if the nights were cold, the
blood was warm; and now with these volcanic veins of ours grown
cool, why, we may walk on the quenched crater of concupiscence,
and who dares challenge us, and say, ha, ha! smut clings to you,
gentlemen; you have the smell of fire upon you. No, sir, no; we
are fumigated, ventilated, scented, powdered, purged as with hyssop.
Pish! he must be truly an Ethiop, whom time cannot whiten;