"Qui cherchez-vous, petite?"

The speaker was la MÉlusine, and the hearer was Nina who considerably resented the half-patronising, half mocking, yet intensely amiable manner the widow chose to assume towards her. Gordon was stricken with warm admiration of madame, and never inquired into her morality, only too pleased when she condescended to talk to or invite him. They had met at a soirÉe at some intimate friends of Vaughan's in the Champs ElysÉes. (Ernest was a favorite wherever he went, and the good-natured French people at once took up his relatives to please him.) He was not there himself, but the baronne's quick eyes soon caught and construed her restless glances through the crowded rooms.

"Je ne cherche personne, madame," said Nina, haughtily. Dressed simply in white tulle, with the most exquisite flowers to be had out of the Palais Royal in the famous golden hair, which gleamed in the gaslight like sunshine, she aroused the serpent which lay hid in the roses of madame's smiles.

Pauline laughed softly, and flirted her fan. "Nay, nay, mignonne, those soft eyes are seeking some one. Who is it? Ah! it is that mÉchant Monsieur Vaughan n'est-ce pas? He is very handsome, certainly, but

"Madame's own thoughts possibly suggest the supposition of mine," said Nina, coldly.

"Comme ces Anglaises sont impolies," thought the baronne. "No, indeed," she said, laughing carelessly, "I know Ernest too well to let my thoughts dwell on him. He is charming to talk to, to waltz with, to flirt with, but from anything further Dieu nous garde! Lauzun himself were not more dangerous or more unstable."

"You speak as bitterly, madame, as if you had suffered from the fickleness," said Nina, with a contemptuous curl of her soft lips. Sweet temper as she was, she could thrust a spear in her enemy's side when she liked.

Madame's eyes glittered like a rattlesnake's. Nina's chance ball shot home. But madame was a woman of the world, and could mask her batteries with a skill of which Nina, with her impetuous abandon, was incapable. She smiled very sweetly, as she answered, "No, petite I have unhappily seen too much of the world not to know that we must never put our trust in those charming mauvais sujets. At your age, I dare say I should not have been proof against your countryman's fascinations, but now, I know just how much his fondest vows are worth, and I have been deaf to them all, for I would not let my heart mislead me against my reason and my conscience. Ah, petite! you little guess what the traitor word 'love' means here, in Paris. We women grow accustomed to our fate, but the lesson is hard sometimes."

"You have been reading 'Mes Confidences,' lately?" asked Nina, with a sarcastic flash of her brilliant eyes.

"How cruel! Do you suppose I can have no Émotions except I learn them second-hand through Lamartine or Delphine Gay? You are very satirical, Miss Gordon——How strange!" said the baronne, interrupting herself; "your bouquet is the fac-simile of mine! Look! De Kerroualle sent you that I fancy? You know he raffoles of you. I was very silly to use mine, but Mr. Vaughan sent me such a pretty note with it, that I had not the resolution to disappoint him. Poor Ernest!" And Madame sighed softly, as if bewailing in her tender heart the woes her obduracy caused. The blood flamed up in Nina's cheeks, and her hand clenched hard on Ernest's flowers: they were the fac-similes of the widow's; delicate pink blossoms, mixed with white azalias. "Is he here to-night, do you know?" madame continued. "I dare say not; he is behind the coulisses, most likely. CÉline, the new danseuse from the Fenice, makes her dÉbut to-night. Here comes poor Gaston to petition for a valse. Be kind to him, pray."

She herself went off to the ball-room, and the effect of her exordium was to make Nina very disagreeable to poor De Kerroualle, whom she really liked, and who was entÊtÉ about her. Not long afterwards, Nina saw in the distance Vaughan's haughty head and powerful brow, and her silly little heart beat as quick as a pigeon's just caught in the trap: he was talking to the widow.

"Look at our young English friend," Pauline was saying, "how she is flirting with Gaston, and De Lafitolle, and De Concressault. Certainly, when your Englishwomen do coquet, they go further than any of us."

"Est-ce possible?" said Ernest, raising his eyebrows.

"MÉchant!" cried madame, with a chastising blow of her fan. "But, do you know, I admire the petite very much. I believe all really beautiful women had that rare golden hair of hers—Lucrezia Borgia (I could never bear Grisi as Lucrezia, for that very reason). La Cenci, the Duchess of Portsmouth, Ænone—and Helen, I am sure, netted Paris with those gold threads. Don't you think it is very lovely?"

"I do, indeed," said Vaughan, with unconscious warmth.

Madame laughed gaily, but there was a disagreeable glitter in her eye. "What, fickle already? Ah well, I give you full leave."

"And example, madame," said Ernest, as he bowed and left her side, glad to have struck the first blow of his freedom from this handsome tyrant, who was as capricious and exacting as she was clever and captivating. But fetters made of fairer roses were over Ernest now, and he never bethought himself of the probable vengeance of that bitterest foe, a woman who is piqued.

"Tout beau!" thought Pauline, as she saw him waltzing with Nina. "Mais je vous donnerai encore l'Échec et mat, mon brave joueur."

"Did you give Madame de MÉlusine the bouquet she carries this evening?" asked Nina, as he whirled her round.

"No," said Ernest, astonished. "Why do you ask?"

"Because she said you did," answered Nina, never accustomed to conceal anything; "and, besides, it is exactly like mine."

"Infernal woman!" muttered Ernest. "How could you for a moment believe that I would have so insulted you?"

"I didn't believe it," said Nina, lifting her frank eyes to his. "But how very late you are; have you been at the ballet?"

His face grew stern. "Did she tell you that?"

"Yes. But why did you go there, instead of coming to dance with me? Do you like those danseuses better than you do me? What was CÉline's or anybody's dÉbut, to you?"

Ernest smiled at the native indignation of the question. "Never think that I do not wish to be with you; but—I wanted oblivion, and one cannot shake off old habits. Did you miss me among all those other men that you have always round you?"

"How unkind that is!" whispered Nina, indignantly. "You know I always do."

He held her closer to him in the waltz, and she felt his heart beat quicker, but she got no other answer.

That night Nina stood before her toilette-table, putting her flowers in water, and some hot tears fell on the azalias.

"I will have faith in him," she cried, passionately; "though all the world be witness against him, I will believe in him. Whatever his life may have been, his heart is warm and true; they shall never make me doubt it."

Her last thoughts were of him, and when she slept his face was in her dreams, while Ernest, with some of the wildest men of his set, smoked hard and drank deep in his chambers to drive away, if he could, the fiends of Regret and Passion and the memory of a young, radiant, impassioned face, which lured him to an unattainable future.

"Nina dearest," said Selina Ruskinstone, affectionately, the morning after, "I hope you will not think me unkind—you know I have no wish but for your good—but don't you think it would be better to be a little more—more reserved, a little less free, with Mr. Vaughan?"

"Explain yourself more clearly," said Nina, tranquilly. "Do you wish me to send to Turkey for a veil and a guard of Bashi-Bazouks, or do you mean that Mr. Vaughan is so attractive that he is better avoided, like a mantrap or a MaËlstrom?"

"Don't be ridiculous," retorted Augusta; "you know well enough what we mean, and certainly you do run after him a great deal too much."

"You are so very demonstrative," sighed Selina, "and it is so easily misconstrued. It is not feminine to court any man so unblushingly."

Nina's eyes flashed, and the blood colored her brow. "I am not afraid of being misconstrued by Mr. Vaughan," she said, haughtily; "gentlemen are kinder and wiser judges in those things than our sex."

"I wouldn't advise you to trust to Ernest's tender mercies," sneered Augusta.

"My dear child, remember his principles," sighed Selina; "his life—his reputation——"

"Leave both him and me alone," retorted Nina, passionately. "I will not stand calmly by to hear him slandered with your vague calumnies. You preach religion often enough; practice it now, and show more common kindness to your cousin: I do not say charity, for I am sick of the cant word, and he is above your pity. You think me utterly lost because I dance, and laugh, and enjoy my life, but, bad as my principles are, I should be shocked—yes, Selina, and I should think I merited little mercy myself, were I as harsh and bitter upon any one as you are upon him. How can you judge him?—how can you say what nobility, and truth, and affection—that will shame your own cold pharisaism—may lie in his heart unrevealed?—how can you dare to censure him?"

In the door of the salon, listening to the lecture his young champion was giving these two blue, opinionated, and strongly pious ladies, stood Ernest, his face even paler than usual, and his eyes with a strange mixture of joy and pain in them. Nina colored scarlet, but went forward to meet him with undisguised pleasure, utterly regardless of the sneering lips and averted eyes of the Miss Ruskinstones. He had come to go with them to St. Germain, and, with a dexterous manoeuvre, took the very seat in the carriage opposite Nina that Eusebius had planned for himself. But the Warden was no match for the Lion in such affairs, and, being exiled to the barouche with Gordon and Augusta, took from under the seat a folio of the "Stones of Venice," and read sulkily all the way.

"My dear fellow," said Vaughan, when they reached St. Germain, "don't you think you would prefer to sit in the carriage, and finish that delightful work, to coming to see some simple woods and terraces? If you would, pray don't hesitate to say so; I am sure Miss Gordon will excuse your absence."

The solicitous courtesy of Ernest's manner was boiling oil to the fire raging in the Warden's gentle breast, and Eusebius, besides, was not quick at retorts. "I am not guilty of any such bad taste," he said, stiffly, "though I do discover a charm in severe studies, which I believe you never did."

"No, never," said Ernest, laughing; "my genius does not lie that way; and I've no vacant bishopric in my mind's eye to make such studies profitable. Even you, you know, light of the Church as you are, want recreation sometimes. Confess now, the chansons À boire last night sounded pleasant after long months of Faithandgrace services!"

Eusebius looked much as I have seen a sleek tom-cat, who bears a respectable character generally, surprised in surreptitiously licking out of the cream-jug. He had the night before (when he was popularly supposed to be sitting under Adolphe Monod) tasted rather too many petits verres up at the PrÉ Catalan, utterly unconscious of his cousin's proximity. The pure-minded soul thus cruelly caught looked prayers of piteous entreaty to Vaughan not to damage his milk-white reputation by further revelation of this unlucky detour into the Broad Road; and Ernest, who, always kind-hearted, never hit a man when he was down, contented himself with saying:

"Ah! well, we are none of us pure alabaster, though some of the sepulchres do contrive to whiten themselves up astonishingly. My father, poor man, once wished to put me in the Church. Do you think I should have graced it, Selina?"

"I can't say I do," sneered Selina.

"You think I should disgrace it? Very probably. I am not good at 'canting.'" And giving Nina his arm, the Warden being much too confused to forestall him, he whispered: "when is that atrocious saint going to take himself over the water? Couldn't we bribe his diocesan to call him before the Arches Court? Surely those long coats, so like the little wooden men in Noah's Ark, and that straightened hair, so mathematically parted down the centre, look 'perverted' enough to warrant it."

Nina shook her head. "Unhappily, he is here for six months for ill health!—the sick-leave of clergymen who wish for a holiday, and are too holy to leave their flock without an excuse to society."

Vaughan laughed, then sighed. "Six months—and you have been here four already! Eusebius hates me cordially—all my English relatives do, I believe; we do not get on together. They are too cold and conventional for me. I have some of the warm Bohemian blood, though God knows I've seen enough to chill it to ice by this time; but it is not chilled—so much the worse for me," muttered Ernest "Tell me," he said, abruptly—"tell me why you took the trouble to defend me so generously this morning?"

She looked up at him with her frank, beaming regard. "Because they dare to misjudge you, and they know nothing, and are not worthy to know anything of your real self."

He pressed his lips together as if in bodily pain. "And what do you know?"

"Have you not yourself said that you talk to me as you talk to no one else?" answered Nina, impetuously; "besides—I cannot tell why, but the first day I met you I seemed to find some friend that I had lost before. I was certain that you would never misconstrue anything I said, and I felt that I saw further into your heart and mind than any one else could do. Was it not very strange?" She stopped, and looked up at him. Ernest bent his eyes on the ground, and breathed fast.

"No, no," he said at last; "yours is only an ideal of me. If you knew me as I really am, you would cease to feel the—the interest that you say——"

He stopped abruptly; facile as he was at pretty compliments, and versed in tender scenes as he had been from his school-days, the longing to make this girl love him, and his struggle not to breathe love to her, deprived him of his customary strength and nonchalance.

"I do not fear to know you as you are," said Nina, gently. "I do not think you yourself allow all the better things that there are in you. People have not judged you rightly, and you have been too proud to prove their error to them. You have found pleasure in running counter to the prudish and illiberal bigots who presumed to judge you; and to a world you have found heartless and false you have not cared to lift the domino and mask you wore."

Vaughan sighed from the bottom of his heart, and walked on in silence for a good five minutes. "Promise me, Nina," he said at length with an effort, "that no matter what you hear against me, you will not condemn me unheard."

"I promise," she answered, raising her eyes to his, brighter still for the color in her checks. It was the first time he had called her Nina.

"Miss Gordon," said Eusebius, hurriedly overtaking them, "pray come with me a moment: there is the most exquisite specimen of the Flamboyant style in an archway——"

"Thank you for your good intentions," said Nina, pettishly, "but really, as you might know by this time, I never can see any attractions in your prosaic and matter-of-fact-fact study."

"It might be more profitable than——"

"Than thinking of La ValliÈre and poor Bragelonne, and all the gay glories of the exiled Bourbons?" laughed Nina. "Very likely; but romance is more to my taste than granite. You would never have killed yourself, like Bragelonne, for the beaux yeux of Louise de la Beaume-sur-Blanc, would you?"

"I trust," said Eusebius, stiffly, "that I should have had a deeper sense of the important responsibilities of the gift of life than to throw it away because a silly girl preferred another."

"You are very impolitic," said Ernest, with a satirical smile. "No lady could feel remorse at forsaking you, if you could get over it so easily."

"He would get over it easily," laughed Nina. "You would call her Delilah, and all the Scripture bad names, order Mr. Ruskin's new work, turn your desires to a deanship, marry some bishop's daughter with high ecclesiastical interest, and console yourself in the bosom of your Mother Church—eh, Mr. Ruskinstone?"

"You are cruelly unjust," sighed Eusebius. "You little know——"

"The charms of architecture? No; and I never shall," answered his tormentor, humming the "Queen of the Roses," and waltzing down the forest glade, where they were walking. "How severe you look!" she said as she waltzed back. "Is that wrong, too? Miriam danced before the ark and Jephtha's daughter."

The Warden appeared not to hear. Certainly his mode of courtship was singular.

"Ernest," he said, turning to his cousin as the rest of the party came up, "I had no idea your sister was in Paris. I have not seen her since she was fourteen. I should not have known her in the least."

"Margaret is in India with her husband," answered Vaughan. "What are you dreaming of? Where have you seen her?"

"I saw her in your chambers," answered the Warden, slowly. "I passed three times yesterday, and she was sitting in the centre window each time."

"Pshaw! You dreamt it in your sleep last night. Margaret's in Vellore, I assure you."

"I saw her," said the Warden, softly; "or, at least, I saw some lady, whom I naturally presumed to be your sister."

Ernest, who had not colored for fifteen years, and would have defied man or woman to confuse him, flushed to his very temples.

"You are mistaken," he said, decidedly. "There is no woman in my rooms."

Eusebius raised his eyebrows, bent his head, smiled and sighed. More polite disbelief was never expressed. The Miss Ruskinstones would have blushed if they could; as they could not, they drew themselves bolt upright, and put their parasols between them and the reprobate. Nina, whose hand was still in Vaughan's arm, turned white, and flashed a quick, upward look at him; then, with a glance at Eusebius, as fiery as the eternal wrath that that dear divine was accustomed to deal out so largely to other people, she led Ernest up to her father, who being providentially somewhat deaf, had not heard this by-play, and said, to her cousin's horror, "Papa, dear, Mr. Vaughan wants you to dine with him at Tortoni's to-night, to meet M. de Vendanges. You will be very happy, won't you?"

Ernest pressed her little hand against his side, and thanked her with his eyes.

Gordon was propitiated for that day; he was not likely to quarrel with a man who could introduce him to "Son Altesse Monseigneur le Duc de Vendanges."