spoke with a sudden fierceness,—"that either Barbara or Bosworth would have ever thought of doing what you tell me they have actually written and proposed doing, to-day, had our own circumstances been different? Barbara may be—nay she is, as you very properly point out—a noble and generous creature, but in this matter, my dear Adela, she's behaving ungenerously; she's exacting a price, and a heavy price, for her past kindness. But it is one which after to-day I shall take care she shall not be in a position to exact.

"Yes," he went on slowly, "we shall of course have to give up this house," his eyes glanced with a certain affection round the room which had always pleased his taste. "Our requirements," he concluded, "have become very simple. We might travel, and show our child something of the world."

A light leapt into his wife's eyes; oh! what joy it would be to leave St. Germains, to become for a while nomadic, but with a sigh she returned to the present. "And to-day, what is to happen to-day, Richard? There is no time to stop them—they will be here in two or three hours."

Mr. Rebell remained silent for some moments, and then: "Not even to please you," he said, "can I bring myself to receive them. But I admit the force of what you said just now. Therefore, if you care to do so, stay—stay and make what excuse for my absence seems good to you. Bosworth will know the reason well enough, unless he's more lost to a sense of decency than I take him to be. But Bar—poor dear Bar," a note of unwilling tenderness crept into his cold voice, "will doubtless believe you if you tell her, what indeed is true enough, that I have an important engagement to-day with Daman, and that, if she cares to see me, I will come and see her before she leaves Paris——"

The speaker went to the window and opened it. He bent down and touched Barbara's forehead with his dry lips. "I trust," he said in his thin voice, "that you will have a pleasant birthday. I will bring you back a box of chocolates from Marquis'," and then, without waiting to hear the child's murmured thanks, he turned on his heel and was gone. Barbara did not see her father again till the next morning.

It was early afternoon, and the fair-haired Englishwoman and her little dark, eager-eyed daughter were sitting out on the rose-wreathed balcony of the Villa d'Arcole. Mrs. Rebell was very silent. She was longing for, and yet dreading, the coming meeting with one she had not seen since they had parted, with tears, at Dover, eight long years before. Her restlessness affected the child, the more so that Barbara knew that her marraine, that is to say in English, her godmother, the source of many beautiful gifts, was at last coming to see them, and in her short life the rare coming of a visitor had always been an event.

Below the balcony, across the tiny formal garden now bright with flowers, the broad sanded roadway stretching between the Villa d'Arcole and the high cool screen formed by the forest trees, was flecked with gay groups of children and their be-ribboned nurses. St. Germains was beginning to awake from its noonday torpor, and leisurely walkers, elegant women whose crinolines produced a curious giant blossom-like effect, elderly bourgeois dressed in rather fantastic summer garb, officers in brilliant uniforms—for in those days Imperial France was a land of brilliancy and of uniforms—were already making their way to the Terrace, ever the centre of the town's life and gossip.

Suddenly there came on Barbara's listening ears a sound of wheels, of sharply ringing hoofs, of musical jingling of harness bells. Several of the strollers below stayed their footsteps, and a moment later Mrs. Rebell became aware that before the iron-wrought gilt gates of the villa there had drawn up the prettiest and most fantastic of equipages, while to the child's eager eyes it seemed as if Cinderella's fairy chariot stood below!

Had Richard Rebell been standing by his wife, he would doubtless have seen something slightly absurd, and in any case undignified, in the sight presented by the low, pale blue victoria, drawn by four white horses ridden by postillions, two of whom now stood, impassive as statues, each at one of the leaders' heads. But to Richard Rebell's little daughter the pretty sight brought with it nothing but pure delight; and for a few moments she was scarcely aware of the two figures who sat back on the white leather cushions. And yet one of these figures, that of the woman, was quite as worthy of attention as the equipage which served to frame her peculiar and striking beauty, and so evidently thought the small crowd which had quickly gathered to gaze at what had been at once recognised as a carriage from the Imperial stables.

Dowered, perhaps to her own misfortune, with a keen dramatic instinct, and a rather riotous love of colour, Barbara Sampiero had chosen to dress, as it were, for the part. Her costume, a deep purple muslin gown, flounced, as was the fashion that spring, from hem to waist, her cross-over puffed bodice, and short-frilled sleeves, the broad Leghorn hat draped with a scarf of old lace fastened down with amethyst bees, and the pale blue parasol matching exactly in tint the colour of the carriage in which she was sitting, recalled a splendid tropical flower.

A certain type of feminine beauty has about it a luminous quality; such was that of Barbara Sampiero, now in full and glowing perfection: some of its radiance due to the fact that as yet Time—she was not far from forty—had spared her any trace of his swift passage. The involuntary homage of those about her proved that she was still as attractive as she had been as a younger woman; her beauty had become to her an all-important asset, and she guarded and tended it most jealously.

Her companion was also, though in a very different way, well worthy of attention. Before stepping out of the carriage he stood up for a moment, and, as he looked about him with amused and leisurely curiosity, the spectators at once recognised in him a typical Englishman of the ruling class. Every detail of his dress, the very cut of his grizzled hair and carefully trimmed whiskers, aroused the envy of those Frenchmen among the crowd who judged themselves to be of much his own age. He had not retained, as had done his contemporary and one-time friend, Richard Rebell, the figure of his youth, but he was still a fine, vigorous-looking man, with a bearing full of dignity and ease.

As his eyes quickly noted the unchanged aspect of the place where he found himself, he reminded himself, with some quickening of his pulses, that no Englishman living had a right to feel in closer touch with the romance of this French town. In the great grim castle—so unlike the usual smiling château—which rose to the right behind the Villa d'Arcole, his own Stuart forbears had spent their dignified exile. More, he himself had deliberately chosen to associate the most romantic and enchanting episode of a life which had not been lacking in enchanting and romantic episodes, with this same place, with St. Germains. He and Madame Sampiero had good reason to gaze as they were both doing at that famous hostelry, the Pavillon Henri IV., of which they could see, embowered in trees, the picturesque buildings overhanging the precipitous slopes.

Julian Fitzjames Berwick, Lord Bosworth of Leicester, had always made it his business to extract the utmost out of life. He had early promised himself that, whoever else were debarred from looking over the hedge, he would belong to the fortunate few who are privileged to walk through the gate. So far he