in any such light as that. As she was situated, she smilingly declared, hardly any tongue that she could employ was likely to come amiss, though English, despite her years at Neuchâtel (beloved of adolescent Anglaises), she had never mastered. The Val Trinité, she further explained, was the one valley in the High Alps where German, French, and Italian were alike spoken, and she was obliged to meet her trilingual peasants on their own ground. They enjoyed it, and so did she. Tempo-Rubato was himself enjoying her Italian, which had several endearing little peculiarities of expression, and which showed a vocabulary not altogether at one with that of Rome or Florence; but he was too tactful to compliment her other than by the one supreme compliment of carrying on the talk with the same takenfor-granted ease and freedom that he would have shown within his own native circle.

Tempo-Rubato's talk went discursively, flightily, yet dogmatically, over a rather widespread field, and developed a number of sinister and heterodox points that pricked the Chatelaine with a vague alarm. While at Neuchâtel, the note-taking Fin-de-Siècle had touched lightly on his friend's characteristics, and had once referred to the possibility of putting him, as the phrase went, into a book. It had struck the Chatelaine that the propriety of using a friend in that way might fairly be questioned-one should be allowed, she thought, undisputed possession of one's own personality; but she was hardly recent enough, as yet, to understand that notoriety was the most delicate compliment that one modern could pay another. She had listened, though, to Fin-de-Siècle's précis, and was therefore not wholly in the dark as concerned the make-up of the erratic personality now offered to her attention. His general attitude, it appeared, was that of opposition-opposition of the most refractory kind-to the old order as personified in the Duke of Largo, his father. This old gentleman was a most devoted son of the Church, more papal than the Pope; his son, accordingly, was a free-thinker of the most extreme type. The head of the house was the father of a family born under the prosaic circumstances of ordinary wedlock, as understood and practised among us Occidentals; the son, therefore, was all the more open to impressions communicated from a certain Persian friend of his, a sojourner in Paris, whose calm assumption that any man was entitled to as many wives as he could support and manage, carried with it an acute fascination. This new disciple had not yet put his theories into practice by undertaking the support and management of even one; but discrepancies between thought and deed are too common for this

particular one to be dwelt on at all lingeringly. Then, as Largo was an aristocrat of the stiffest and most exacting kind, so Tempo-Rubato's democratic propensities passed all bounds; and many of his friends had come to the conclusion that the only way to bring him to his senses on this point was to take him literally at his word, and to help to bring him into close quarters, unrestricted by forms and boundaries, with the people itself. But to this final test he had never yet submitted himself.

The Chatelaine listened to his daring discursions with considerable composure; they were quite remote from her own course of thought and action, seeming to belong to a world with which she had no special concern, nor was likely to have. She looked indifferently around over the crowd scattered about the deck, and gave an abstracted glance or two across the ruffled waters of the lake,—both the passengers and the waves giving the impression of changelessness in change proper to the Swiss season, and her thoughts idly wandered back to the showy personage whom they had left behind on the Schweizerhof Quay. Who was she? how long had he known her? how had he probably become acquainted with her? questions that she had no thought of asking, and which he would have hazarded some impropriety in answering, but questions that may be answered here properly enough.

He had first met her in Paris some four years previous; though she was not Parisian, as she loved to claim, nor even French, as she always would strenuously insist. She was of the Riviera, and, during a childhood which had stood considerable banging about, had strayed as far south as Naples, and even beyond. In course of time she turned up in Paris to try her fortune, and her fortune had begun, I am sorry to say, in no less reprehensible a place than the-but everybody knows its name. He had been principally indebted for this introduction to the painstaking but not infallible Fin-de-Siècle, who had dragged his new friend half-way across Paris only to strand him upon the empty inanity of a one-franc night. The big, garish place was almost deserted; a dozen young flâneurs roamed about disconsolately, and two or three notable "daughters of joy" had looked in, but had disdained to exert themselves for the applause of such an audience. But a few others-beginners, amateurs, lights of the sixth magnitude

were doing what they could to keep the ball rolling, and among them was this girl, whom Tempo-Rubato eyed from the first with an absorbing interest. She had good looks; she had a grace of her own, though she was new; she showed as yet only the first faint trace of the insolent audacity that was to come later; and so, when the orchestra passed from a vulgar,

jigging, irritating air to one of a different sort,one that was free, fresh, rapid, undulating, that spun and turned and doubled on itself with a splendid and complicated insistency that suggested the possibility of perpetual motion, after all, the young Italian bounded forward, murmured a phrase in his own language and hers, and in a moment more both were committed to a step to which the floor of the Closerie was all unused.

Fin-de-Siècle was instantly in an agony of apprehension, and would have drawn the rash young fellow back at once; he claimed to hold his finger on the pulse of Paris, and more than once had he seen imported originality launch itself on that treacherous floor only to struggle back through the breakers of polite contempt or open jeers. But Tempo-Rubato was not to be stayed by his faint-hearted friend, nor did his nobility feel the need of deference to the opinion of such of his contemporaries as happened just then to surround him. And he justified himself completely. On another evening the same place, in full fête, might have repudiated him altogether; but on this particular occasion anything that served to fill in the unprofitable hours stood some chance of toleration, of acceptance, or even of applause. The novelty of the tarantella attracted attention from the first. Several youths, correctly dressed in frock-coats and high hats, had been looking on in contemptuous tolerance of a dance between a certain ill-assorted pair: a crass young fellow fresh from Anjou or Languedoc, who wore a cheap, ill-fitting salt-and-pepper suit, was throwing all the exaggerated enthusiasm of a novice into the series of senseless and disjointed flingings which he was directing toward his partner, a pale, thin, wearied young woman who wore a simple gown of brown silk, and who indulged at frequent intervals in a plainly audible sigh. There was nothing new in this, and the young men turned from the one dance to the other. A pair of merry little étudiantes who were rustling around with rich black silks on their backs, wicked little feather turbans on their heads, the ends of a skipping-rope in their hands, and evident intentions on a bulky and awkward Englishman in their faces, relinquished their middle-aged prey and crowded into the new circle too. Even a stolid ouvrière or so, such as occasionally appear at these places and dance with clumsy sure-footedness on the brink of evil, added their interest and applause to that of the others.

But to Tempo-Rubato, and to his partner as well, the onlooking circle was a matter of comparative indifference. When he had lightly thrown back the lapels of his coat he felt himself dressed out in ragged sheepskin, and the lustrous hat that he had snatched from his head

changed to a tambourine before his arm could even extend it. The hand that thrust back a straggling lock from the temples of his visà-vis had placed a striped and folded cloth above them, and the shake she had given to the disordered front of her gown had put a long apron there, wide-barred in barbaric stripes of color. As he danced around her with an indulgent and confident grace, the tired and callous musicians in shabby dress-coats became a band of blithesome, tangle-haired pipers; and when she in her turn circled about him with increasing confidence in every step, and a more open gratitude, the anemones of Pæstum burst into bloom all over the wide reach of the waxen floor, the low, painted ceiling rose to the height and semblance of the blue sky itself, the battered columns of Ceres and of Neptune advanced in stately fashion through flimsy panelings and tawdry mirrors, and the free, pure, blessed air of heaven seemed to blow abundantly and refreshingly through the tarnished atmosphere of the place. And when they had ended their performance he had given her a vogue.

That she could dance divinely was now patent, and presently it came to be discovered that she had a voice with five or six good notes in it. It was not a voice of any great strength or compass, but her articulation was particularly distinct; and she soon passed on to the "Ambassadeurs," where, in the rendition of couplets of a certain sort, a good articulation is of more importance than fine vocalization. Six months more found her at the "Nouveautés," where she began in minor parts, and where, in the course of a year, she came to create a title rôle (that of the Duchesse des Guenilles) in an operetta which a great master-great as regarded that genre- had composed expressly for her. Then for two or three years more she had enjoyed an immense vogue, and now she was taking a little outing-half work, half play — en province. There were not wanting those to hint that the rising of a new star had dimmed her luster, and that she was clever enough to see when Paris could spare her. But such gossip was heard only in dark corners, and had no place in the general hubbub of adulation which accompanied her to the Gare de l'Est, and saw her off, in her own special train, to Switzerland.

All of these facts Tempo-Rubato was obviously barred from laying before the Chatelaine; besides, none of these things had any place in his thoughts to-day. He was merely refreshing himself with a draught of some simple, cooling beverage, and if he compared it with the spiced wines which had tickled his palate these past years, the comparison was largely unconscious. It was a fresh and primitive little drink, and went

as the old formula ran, good beds, good wine, good attendance. And they had thought he meant a villa or a palace. A palace-yes; one like Claude Melnotte's-an empty nothing of stage scenery. And all his picturesque posing had been merely a full-dress rehearsal in open air, and all his compliments but the insolent persiflage of a player off on a day or two of leave. Ah! but that woman- -that woman! She was likely to appear at any moment; she might be standing in the wings now waiting for her cue. Would she have the first entrance or the second? Might it not, oh, might it not be even as late as the third? Or could not some crowning mercy hold her off until almost the finale itself? How could she explain to the Chatelaine? What would the Governor think?

But Mlle. Pasdenom came on just as the exigencies of the piece required, and with absolute disregard of the feelings of the suffering Aurelia. There was a burst of harmony, a little more blatant than usual, from the trombones and the fiddles and the rest, and Aurelia, knowing full well what it meant, shut her eyes tight-tight. And when she opened them the star had stepped out with an airy boldness, and had taken possession of the stage and the house. Of her identity there could be no possible doubt; the distance was so short, the glare of the footlights so searching, that no costuming, however clever, could have concealed it. The one look that Miss West gave was enough, and for the rest of the time she sat with her eyes on the program, listening now and then to mademoiselle's feint at singing, and judging from her searching accents that a good deal of broad, extravagant acting was going on. She knew that the Chatelaine and her guardian had made the same discovery, and she felt the movements with which both had turned toward her looks of inquiry that her own eyes had been unable to meet. Her heart was beating, her head was bursting, her eyes were on the point of overflowing, and when the curtain had descended on the hurly-burly of the first finale she asked to go. The Governor had more than satisfied his curiosity, the Chatelaine had not been much impressed by the merits of the performance nor by the tone of the place, and they all left at once.

On the following afternoon the Governor was seated idly on one of the benches in front of the Lion Monument. The place was chill and dusky, and a tiny stream of water dribbled dolefully down the scarred face of the rock. Presently a soft step came along the path behind him, and a little black hand lightly touched his elbow. With the black gloves went a black gown, a black wrap, a black sunshade, and a large jet cross-the full penitentials,

as one might say, of opera bouffe. There was a large resignation in the eyes, and a touching little tremor in the voice. The Duchess had hoped that her new friends would be pleased to remain through the piece, since it was so difficult to do one's self complete justice in the first act of a first performance on a new stage; doubly difficult when the place was so small, the arrangements so familiar and impromptu, the audience so distracted by competing interests in the salons outside. If they had given her only a few moments' grace, it might have come to seem quite credible to them that ladies of some consideration should more than once have complimented her upon her art, and have even expressed a desire to follow in her footsteps. Ah, well, she had never before appeared in the provinces; never, assuredly, in a mere spot for summer-gathering; the piece was taken less seriously than in the capital; there was a certain relaxation, a certain informality, a perplexing cosmopolitan commingling-too many targets to hit with one poor little arrow.

She smiled wistfully in the good old Governor's face, and sat down on the other end of the bench.

But she was not complaining, he should understand, of her reception. No; that had been fair: not exactly what she had been accustomed to, but fair-fair. Still it was triste to be so far from home, to have none of one's associates about one, to miss the reassuring sound of a friendly hand at just the desired moment. It would take little, perhaps, to induce her to forego this Swiss tour even now; but, then, there was poor papa

It was one of the Duchess's favorite fancies that a father, somewhere, was dependent upon her for support. The Governor knew that it was a very common thing to have a father, and he had no motive for refusing such an appendage here. He accordingly vouchsafed her a look of kindly sympathy, without considering too curiously the precise grounds for it. The Duchess, who always dressed her parts, no matter how she sang them, was now fluttering a little black-edged handkerchief in one pathetic hand. It was the grand opera that had always been her dream; but what would you? — she could accomplish merely what her gifts permitted. Properly, one was to be judged not entirely by what one actually did, but in part by what one would wish to do. Why must she find a bar rigidly set for artists in her genre, when no great difficulties were made for others who, while on a higher plane, were lessshould she say it? less capable than herself? Why must she sometimes hear herself spoken of slightingly, disparagingly? Why, monsieur? Because she had allowed freedom and expansion for the growth and development