ing to place a word,
the old emigre raised his hand, and added with dignity, "I've been a
soldier, too. I would never dare suggest a doubtful step to the man
whose name my niece is to bear. I tell you that entre galants hommes an
affair can always be arranged."

"But saperiotte, Monsieur le Chevalier, it's fifteen or sixteen years
ago. I was a lieutenant of hussars then."

The old Chevalier seemed confounded by the vehemently despairing tone of
this information. "You were a lieutenant of hussars sixteen years ago,"
he mumbled in a dazed manner.

"Why, yes! You did not suppose I was made a general in my cradle like a
royal prince."

In the deepening purple twilight of the fields spread with vine leaves,
backed by a low band of sombre crimson in the west, the voice of the old
ex-officer in the army of the Princes sounded collected, punctiliously
civil.

"Do I dream? Is this a pleasantry? Or am I to understand that you have
been hatching an affair of honour for sixteen years?"

"It has clung to me for that length of time. That is my precise meaning.
The quarrel itself is not to be explained easily. We met on the ground
several times during that time, of course."

"What manners! What horrible perversion of manliness! Nothing can
account for such inhumanity but the sanguinary madness of the Revolution
which has tainted a whole generation," mused the returned emigre in a
low tone. "Who's your adversary?" he asked a little louder.

"My adversary? His name is Feraud."

Shadowy in his tricorne and old-fashioned clothes, like a bowed, thin
ghost of the ancien regime, the Chevalier voiced a ghostly memory. "I
can remember the feud about little Sophie Derval, between Monsieur de
Brissac, Captain in the Bodyguards, and d'Anjorrant (not the pock-marked
one, the other--the Beau d'Anjorrant, as they called him). They met
three times in eighteen months in a most gallant manner. It was the
fault of that little Sophie, too, who would keep on playing . . ."

"This is nothing of the kind," interrupted General D'Hubert. He laughed
a little sardonically. "Not at all so simple," he added. "Nor yet half
so reasonable," he finished, inaudibly, between his teeth, and ground
them with rage.

After this sound nothing troubled the silence for a long time, till the
Chevalier asked, without animation: "What is he--this Feraud?"

"Lieutenant of hussars, too--I mean, he's a general. A Gascon. Son of a
blacksmith, I believe."

"There! I