r
swordsman than I was; and as he loved the art, he will have gone on
improving, and must be miraculous.

"By the way," he said, suddenly, "there was a story went through
Flanders near four years back of the best swordsman in the German
army being killed by a mere boy in an English regiment, and I said
then, I think that this must be my pupil. Was it so?"

"It was," Rupert said. "It was a painful affair; but I was forced
into it."

"Make no excuse, I beg," the marquis said, laughing.

"Now, young ladies, let us to supper; but beware of this prisoner
of war, for if he is only half as formidable with his eyes as with
his wrist, it is all up with your poor hearts."

Then, with much merriment, the four officers sat down to table,
their host and hostess joining for company, and the young ladies
acting as attendants.

No one would have guessed that three of the party had formed part
of an army which that day had been utterly routed, or that the
other was their prisoner; but the temperament of the French enables
them to recover speedily from misfortune; and although they had
been dull and gloomy enough until Rupert so suddenly fell into
their hands, the happy accident of his being known to their
colonel, and the pleasure and excitement caused by the meeting,
sufficed to put them in high spirits again, especially as their own
corps had suffered but slightly in the action, having been in
reserve on the left, and never engaged except in a few charges to
cover the retreat.

When the battle was alluded to, the brows of the French officers
clouded, and they denounced in angry terms the fatal blunder of the
marshal of weakening his centre to strengthen the left against a
feigned attack. But the subject soon changed again, for, as the
marquis said, "It would be quite time to talk it over tomorrow,
when they would know who had fallen, and what were the losses;" for
from their position on the left, they had little idea of the
terrible havoc which had been made among the best blood in France.

Long after all the others had retired, the marquis and Rupert sat
together talking over old times. Rupert learned that even before he
had left the Chace the marquis had received news that the order of
banishment, which the king had passed against him because he had
ventured to speak in public in terms of indignation at the
wholesale persecution of the Protestants, had been rescinded; and
that the estates, which had also been confiscated