regarding Parisian
dissipations, from which she decided to remove him, if possible. He
acknowledged he would be glad to go--he was sick of Europe any way.

The last day he took a train for Fontainbleau, remained two hours
under the beeches, alone, and got back to Paris in time to make the
train for Havre.

After they had got comfortably established on a homeward-bound vessel,
and he was watching the land line grow fainter over the waters, Mrs.
McVeigh came to him with a bit of news read from the last journal
brought aboard.

The dowager, Marquise de Caron, had established herself at Geneva for
the season, accompanied by her daughter, the present Marquise, whose
engagement to Monsieur Loris Dumaresque had just been announced.

CHAPTER X.

Long before the first gun had been fired at Fort Sumter, Madame la
Marquise was able to laugh over that summer-time madness of hers, and
ridicule herself for the wasted force of that infatuation.

She was no longer a recluse unacquainted with men. The prophecy of
Madame, the dowager, that if left alone she would return to the
convent, had not been verified. The death of the dowager occurred
their first winter in Paris, after Geneva, and the Marquise had not
yet shown a predilection for nunneries.

She had seen the world, and it pleased her well enough; indeed, the
portion of the world she came in contact with did its best to please
her, and with a certain feverish eagerness she went half way to meet
it.

People called her a coquette--the most dangerous of coquettes, because
she was not a cold one. She was responsive and keenly interested up to
the point where admirers declared themselves, and proposals of
marriage followed; after _that_, every man was just like every other
one! Yet she was possessed of an idea that somewhere there existed a
hitherto undiscovered specimen who could discuss the emotions and the
philosophies in delightful sympathy, and restrain the expression of
his own personal emotions to tones and glances, those indefinite
suggestions that thrill yet call for no open reproof--no reversal of
friendship.

So, that was the man she was seeking in the multitudes--and on the
way there were surely amusements to be found!

Dumaresque remonstrated. She defended herself with the avowal that she
was only avenging weaker womanhood, smiled at, won, and forgotten, as
his sex were fond of forgetting.

"But we expect better things of women," he declared warmly; "