tuous
answer.

Mademoiselle gave no outward sign of the deep wound her pride
was receiving. The girl of nineteen, who had scorned the young
secretary-lover in the park of Bellecour that morning four years ago,
was developed into a handsome lady of three-and-twenty.

"It would be beneath the dignity of his station to soil his hands in
such a conflict as my father has suggested," she said at last.

"I wonder would it be beneath the dignity of his courage," mused the
same caustic friend. "But surely not, for nothing could be beneath
that."

"Madame!" exclaimed Suzanne, her cheeks reddening; for as of old, and
like her father, she was quickly moved to anger. "Will it please you to
remember that M. d'Ombreval is my affianced husband?"

"True," confessed the lady, no whit abashed. "But had I not been told so
I had accounted him your rejected suitor, who, broken-hearted, gives no
thought either to his own life or to yours."

In a pet, Mademoiselle gave her shoulder to the speaker and turned
away. In spite of the words with which she had defended him, Suzanne
was disappointed in her betrothed, and yet, in a way, she understood his
bearing to be the natural fruit of that indomitable pride of which she
had observed the outward signs, and for which, indeed as much as for the
beauty of his person, she had consented to become his wife. After all,
it was the outward man she knew. The marriage had been arranged, and
this was but their third meeting, whilst never for an instant had they
been alone together. By her mother she had been educated up to the
idea that it was eminently desirable she should become the Vicomtesse
d'Ombreval. At first she had endured dismay at the fact that she had
never beheld the Vicomte, and because she imagined that he would be,
most probably, some elderly roue, as did so often fall to the lot of
maidens in her station. But upon finding him so very handsome to behold,
so very noble of bearing, so lofty and disdainful that as he walked he
seemed to spurn the very earth, she fell enamoured of him out of very
relief, as well as because he was the most superb specimen of the other
sex that it had ever been hers to observe.

And now that she had caught a glimpse of the soul that dwelt
beneath that mass of outward perfections it had cost her a pang of
disappointment, and the poisonous reflection cast upon his courage by
that sardonic lady with whom she had talked was having its effect.

But the time was