The SECRET of

TONI

MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

Author of
“The Victory,” “The Sprightly Romance of Marsac,”
“The Château of Montplaisir,” etc.

Illustrated by George Brehm

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK MCMVII

Copyright, 1907, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Published February, 1907

MISS SEAWELL’S BOOKS.

CHÂTEAU OF MONTPLAISIR.

Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25.

THE VICTORY.
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50.

YOUNG HEROES OF THE NAVY SERIES.

MIDSHIPMAN PAULDING.
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00.

LITTLE JARVIS.
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00.

PAUL JONES.
Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, $1.00.

DECATUR AND SOMERS.
Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, $1.00.

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.

“Standing there ... gnawing his mustache.”
[Page [235].]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE SECRET OF TONI

CHAPTER I

Toni’s name was Antoine Marcel, but he was never called by it but once in his life, and that was at his baptism, when he was eight days old.

He had a shock of black hair and a snub nose, and the tan and freckles on his face were an inch thick, but he had a pair of black eyes so soft and bright and appealing that they might have belonged to one of the houris of Paradise. His wide mouth was full of sharp, white teeth, and when he smiled, which was very often, his smile began with his black eyes and ended with his white teeth.

At ten years of age Toni was a complete man of the world—of his world, that is. This consisted of a gay, sunny little old garrison town, Bienville by name, in the south of France.

He had his friends, his foes, his lady-love, and also he had arranged his plan of life. He knew himself to be the most fortunate person in all Bienville. In the first place, his mother, Madame Marcel, kept the only candy shop in the town, and Toni, being the only child of his mother, and she a widow, enjoyed all the advantages of this envied position. He had no father such as other boys had—Paul Verney, for example, the advocate’s son—to make him go to school when he would rather lie on his stomach in the meadow down by the river, and watch the butterflies dancing in the sun and the foolish bumblebees stumbling like drunkards among the clover blossoms.

Paul Verney was his best friend,—that is, except Jacques. Toni, owing to his exceptional position, as the only son of the house of Marcel, candy manufacturer, would have had no lack of friends among boys of his own age, but he was afraid of other boys, except Paul Verney. This was pure cowardice on Toni’s part, because, although short for his age, he was well built and had as good legs and arms and was as well able to take care of himself as any boy in Bienville. Paul Verney was a pink-cheeked, clean, well set up boy two years older than Toni, and as industrious as Toni was idle, as anxious to learn as Toni was determined not to learn, as honest with his father, the lawyer, as Toni was unscrupulous with his mother about the amount of candy he consumed, and as full of quiet courage with other boys as Toni was an arrant and shameless poltroon about some things. Toni was classed as a bad boy and Paul Verney as a good boy, yet the two formed one of those strange kinships of the soul which are stronger than blood ties and last as long as life itself.

Toni, being of a shrewd and discerning mind, realized that Paul Verney would have loved him just as much if Madame Marcel had not kept a candy shop, and this differentiated him from all the other boys in Bienville, and although Paul often severely reprobated Toni, and occasionally gave him kicks and cuffs, which Toni could have resented but did not, he had no fear whatever of Paul.

Toni’s other friend, Jacques, was a soldier. Jacques was about three inches high and was made of tin. He had once been a very smart soldier, with red trousers and an imposing shako, and a musket as big as himself, but the paint had been worn off the trousers and shako long ago; and as for the musket, only the butt remained. Jacques lived in Toni’s pocket and he was even more intimate with him than with Paul Verney. There were seasons when Paul Verney’s kicks and cuffs caused a temporary estrangement from him on Toni’s part, but there was never any estrangement between Toni and Jacques. Jacques never remonstrated with Toni, never contradicted him, never wanted any share of the candy which Toni abstracted under his mother’s nose and ran down in the meadow to munch. There were some things Toni could say to Jacques that he could not say to any human being in the world, not even to Paul Verney, and Jacques never showed the least surprise or disgust. It is a great thing to have a perfectly complaisant, unvarying friend always close to one, and such was Jacques to Toni.

Toni had heard something about the war which occurred a long time ago, when the soldiers went a great way off from Bienville to a place called Russia, where it was very cold. In Toni’s mind, Jacques had been to that place, and that was where he lost the red paint off his trousers, and the black paint off his shako, and the barrel of his musket. Toni had a way of talking to Jacques, and imagined that Jacques talked back to him, a notion which, when Toni repeated what Jacques had said to him, Paul Verney thought quite ridiculous. Jacques told Toni long stories about that cold place called Russia. Toni knew that there was another place, very hot, called Algeria, and Jacques had been there, too. Jacques had been everywhere that the soldiers had been, and he told Toni long tales about these places in the summer nights, when Toni was in his little bed under the roof, with the stars peeping in roguishly at the window, and Madame Marcel’s tongue and knitting needles clacking steadily down stairs at the open door of the shop. And on winter days, when Toni left home for school and changed his mind and went snow-balling instead, Jacques encouraged him by telling him that it was very like Russia.

Toni also found another use for Jacques. When he wished to say things which his mother occasionally and properly cuffed him for, he could talk it all out with Jacques. This seemed supremely absurd to Paul Verney and the other boys in the neighborhood, notably the five sons of Clery, the tailor, who jeered at Toni when they discovered his relations with Jacques. But Toni was as insensible to ridicule as to reproof. The only thing that really moved him was when his mother had rheumatism and her knees swelled. Then Toni would cry as if his heart would break, the big tears running down his dirty face as he sobbed and buried his fists in his hair, and would not be comforted, even though his mother could sit in her chair by the stove, and stir the candy kettle, and would give him the kettle to lick, after she had poured the candy out. But this was never more than once or twice a year, and the rest of the time Toni was as happy and as free from care as the birdlings in spring that sang under the linden trees in the park.

Toni had already arranged a marriage of convenience for himself, which was of the most advantageous description. Across the street from Madame Marcel’s shop was the baking establishment of Mademoiselle Duval, and Denise, the niece and idol of Mademoiselle Duval, was just two years younger than Toni and as pretty as a pink and white bonbon—in fact, she looked not unlike a bonbon. She had very pink cheeks, and very blue eyes, and a long plait of yellow hair, like the yellow candy of mélasse which Madame Marcel made every Saturday morning.

Denise was as correct as Toni was incorrect. She always said, “Oui, Monsieur,” and “Non, Madame,” in the sweetest little voice imaginable, with her eyes cast down and her plump hands crossed before her. Not a hair of her blond head was ever out of place, and the blue-checked apron which extended from her neck to her heels was as speckless as the white muslin frock she wore in church on Sundays. She was the most obedient of children, and Madame Marcel, when she wept and scolded Toni for his numerous misdeeds, often told him that she wished he were only half as good as Denise Duval, who had never disobeyed her aunt in her life. Toni smiled mysteriously whenever his mother said this, and chuckled inwardly at something known only to Jacques and himself, namely, that when he grew to be a man he meant to marry Denise. What could be better than the combination of a candy shop and a cook shop and bakery?

And then there were other advantages connected with the match. Many of the little girls that Toni knew had large and dangerous-looking fathers, some of them soldiers with fierce mustaches, and these fathers sometimes kicked and cuffed idle little boys who should have been at school or at home instead of lying in the meadow or loitering upon the bench under the acacia tree by Mademoiselle Duval’s shop, inhaling the delicious odors of the bakery kitchen. Denise had a father who was, indeed, large and dangerous-looking and was a soldier, too; nay, a sergeant, and had the fiercest mustache Toni had ever seen, but he only came to Bienville once a year for a few days on his annual leave, and seemed to Toni a most irrational and singular person. For although he could, if he wished, have eaten all the cakes in his sister’s shop, Toni never saw him so much as look at one of them.

On this annual reappearance of Sergeant Duval, Toni kept carefully out of the way. Once when he was hiding under the counter of the shop he had overheard the sergeant asking Madame Marcel why she did not make that little rascal of hers go to school, and when Madame Marcel, a pretty, plump widow of forty, tearfully admitted that she could not, of herself, manage Toni, the sergeant promptly offered to give Toni a good thrashing as a favor to Madame Marcel. This, Madame Marcel, in a panic, declined, and then the sergeant made a proposition still more shocking to Toni’s feelings.

“Then why, Madame,” he said gallantly, twirling his mustache, “do you not marry again? If I were young and handsome enough I should offer myself, and then, I warrant you, I would make that young rogue of yours behave himself.”

Whether this were an offer or not, Madame Marcel could not determine. She might have fancied the dashing, fierce-looking sergeant, with his five medals on his breast, but that proposition to thrash Toni robbed the proposal of all its charm. And besides that, Madame Marcel, although she praised Denise, felt a secret jealousy of the little girl’s perfections. Toni, as a rule, was less afraid of soldiers than any other people, especially if they were cavalrymen, for Toni dearly loved horses and was not the least cowardly about them, and felt a secret bond of sympathy between himself and all who had to do with the cult of the horse.

Bienville had been a place of considerable military consequence, in the old, far-off days, and still retained evidences of having had ten thousand troops quartered there in long rows of tumble-down barrack buildings. But not much remained of this former consequence except the old barracks, a hideous war monument in the public square, and a very grim old woman, the widow of a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Toni regarded the monument and old Marie, in her mob cap and spectacles, sitting proud and stern on a bench in the public square, as belonging to each other. All the soldiers, and even the officers, saluted old Marie as they passed—tributes which were received with proud composure.

Everything else in the town of Bienville was gay and cheerful, except the monument and old Marie. It was now garrisoned by one cavalry regiment only, and was a depot for horses and cavalry recruits. There was a big riding-school with a tan-bark floor, where the new recruits were broken in and taught to ride. It was Toni’s delight to crawl in by the window or the small side door, and, hiding under a pile of horse furniture in a corner, watch the horses gallop around, their hoofs beating softly on the tan-bark, their eyes bright and glistening, their crests up, and their coats shining like satin with much currying at the hands of brawny troopers.

Toni did not know what it was to be afraid of a horse, and loved nothing better than to hang about the barracks stables and riding-school and take cheerfully the cuffs and kicks he got from the soldiers for being in the way. Especially was this true on Sundays when he did not have Paul Verney’s company, for Paul went to church obediently, while Toni, after submitting to be washed and dressed clean, was almost certain to run away, disregarding his mother’s frantic cries after him, and spend the whole morning in the delightful precincts of the barracks stables. Jacques liked it, too, and told Toni it reminded him of those glorious old days when his trousers and shako were new and he carried his musket jauntily, in the long red line that set out for Russia. So Toni haunted the barracks stables to please Jacques as well as himself.

One glorious and never-to-be-forgotten day, a good-natured trooper had hoisted Toni on the back of a steady-going old charger, who knew as much about teaching recruits to ride as any soldier in the regiment. The old charger, being offended at finding the small, wriggling object upon his back, took it into his head, for the first time since his colthood, to plunge and kick violently, and ended by bolting out of the barracks yard and making straight across the edge of the town, through the meadow to the old stone bridge that spanned the river. The trooper, who had meant to oblige Toni, suddenly realized that the boy was the only son of his mother and she a widow. Jumping on another horse, he galloped after Toni, down the stony street, into the green lane and across the bridge.

The old charger, who was eighteen years old, gave out at the end of the bridge and came down to a sober trot. He had not, with all his efforts, got rid of the small, wriggling object on his back. As for Toni, he had the time of his life. It was the one full draft of riotous joy that he had tasted. It was better even than licking the candy kettle on Saturday mornings. The wild flight through the air, as it seemed to Toni, the snorting breath of the old charger, the delicious sense of bumping up and down, lifted him into an ecstasy. When the trooper came up the horse was sedately browsing by the wayside, and Toni, with his arms clasped around the horse’s neck and his black head down on his mane, was in a little Heaven of his own. The trooper, who had expected to find Toni lying by the roadside, mangled, was immensely relieved and swore at him out of pure joy, and, as a reward for not having got his neck broken, allowed Toni to ride the old charger back into the town. This was not to be compared with that wild flight through space, that glorious bumping up and down, that sense of delight in feeling the horse panting under him; but it was something.

Toni, trotting soberly home, concluded that he would not tell his mother, but he meant to tell Jacques all about it, and, putting his hand in his pocket, Jacques was not there! Oh, what agony was Toni’s then! He burst into a fit of weeping, and, rushing back to the riding-school, crawled around frantically everywhere the troopers would let him go, searching for his loved and lost Jacques. The story of his ride had got out by that time and he was not kicked and cuffed when he searched, with streaming eyes and loud sobs, for his dearly loved Jacques. But Jacques could not be found, not even along the stone street, nor by the lanes, nor across the old stone bridge, and the day grew dark to Toni. He searched all day, and when he went home at night and told his mother of his loss, Madame Marcel wept, too. It was no good to promise him a whole company of tin soldiers. They were only tin soldiers, but Jacques was his friend, his confidant, his other self, his oversoul. Toni cried himself to sleep that night. It was so lonely up in the little garret without Jacques! And Toni knew that Jacques was lonely without him. Toni pictured poor Jacques, alone and forlorn, lost in the tan-bark, or trampled under foot in the street, or floating down the darkling river, or perhaps being chewed up by the goats that browsed on the other side of the bridge. In the middle of the night Madame Marcel was awakened by Toni’s groans and cries.

“Oh, mama, mama!” he cried, “how lonely Jacques must be! What is he thinking of now? He has no musket to take care of himself. Oh, mama!”—and then Toni howled again.

The next day Toni was up at dawn searching for his beloved. He searched all the morning, but he could not find the lost one. When he came home to dinner at twelve o’clock, he met Paul Verney, and Paul saw by Toni’s woebegone look and tear-stained face that some calamity had befallen him. Toni had looked forward with triumphant pleasure to telling Paul about that wild ride on the old horse’s back, but he could give it no thought. Paul was kind and sympathetic and understood Toni’s sorrow, which was of some little comfort to the bereaved one. While the two boys sat together on the bench under the acacia tree, close to Madame Marcel’s shop, up came little Denise, as neat and pink and white as ever. One of her hands was closed, and, as she approached Toni, she said, in the sweetest small voice in the world:

“Toni, is this yours? I found it in the street,”—and, opening her little hand—oh, joy!—there was Jacques, his shako a little crooked, one of his legs out of plumb, but it was Jacques. Toni, without a word of thanks, seized Jacques, and, rushing off, flew to his favorite spot for meditation—a little corner on one of the abutments of the old stone bridge. Once there, he kissed Jacques and held him to his breast, and told him of the heart-breaking search made for him, and Jacques, as usual, was silently sympathetic and understood all that Toni had suffered.

Meanwhile Paul Verney, ashamed for Toni’s want of manners in not thanking Denise and all unaware of the great wave of gratitude that was surging through Toni’s whole being, went into the shop and told Madame Marcel of Toni’s good fortune. Madame Marcel was so overjoyed that she not only invited Paul to help himself to whatever he wanted in the way of sweets, but ran out and, catching Denise in her arms, kissed her and brought her into the shop and invited her, as she had invited Paul Verney, to select what she wished. Denise, with characteristic modesty, took two small sticks of candy, but Madame Marcel gave her, as well as Paul, a large bag of very beautiful bonbons.

It was late in the afternoon before Toni appeared, his eyes shining like the stars that peeped in at his little window, his wide mouth showing all his white teeth. Madame Marcel took him by the hand, and they went over with state and ceremony to thank Denise for restoring the loved and lost Jacques. Toni felt indignant that Mademoiselle Duval, a tall, thin, elderly, heartless, maiden lady, should laugh at Jacques when Toni displayed him, and tell Madame Marcel she could have bought a couple of boxes of tin soldiers for one-half the bonbons she had given Denise. But Toni had known all the time that very few grown people know anything about boys, and was simply filled with contempt for Mademoiselle Duval. She was thin and ugly, too, not round and plump like his own mother, and had the bad taste to prefer clean, well-mannered little girls to dirty and greedy boys. Up to that time, Toni’s feelings toward Denise had been purely of a mercenary character, but from the day she restored Jacques a little seedling sentiment sprang up in Toni’s heart; the great master of all passions had planted it there. It was something like what he felt for Paul Verney—a sense of well-being, even of protection, when Denise was near. She had acted the part of a guardian angel, she had restored Jacques to him, and she did not seem to mind his dirty face and grimy hands. She acquired a bewitching habit of dividing with Toni the stale apple tarts her aunt gave her, and, beckoning to him across the street, she would have him sit by her on the bench under the acacia tree and always give him at least two-thirds of the tarts.

A few days after the tragedy of Jacques’ loss and return, Sergeant Duval, Denise’s father, appeared for his annual visit to Bienville. The story of Jacques was told to him, and when he came over to pay his call of ceremony on Madame Marcel, he was so rude as to twit Toni about Jacques. Toni, much displeased at this, retired to his usual place of refuge under the counter, and concluded that when he married Denise he would contrive to be absent during Sergeant Duval’s annual visit.

CHAPTER II

Paul Verney was twelve years old, and had never had any affairs of the heart, like Toni. But one June afternoon, in the same summer when Toni had lost and recovered Jacques, and had succumbed to the tender passion, fate overtook Paul Verney in the person of Lucie Bernard, the prettiest little creature imaginable, prettier even than Denise and very unlike that small piece of perfection. Paul, who was very fond of reading, took his book, which happened to be an English one, to the park that afternoon of fate, and was sitting on a bench, laboriously puzzling over the English language, when a beautiful little girl in blue, with a gigantic sash and large pale blue hat, with roses blushing all over it, under which her dark hair fell to her waist, came composedly up to him and said:

“Let me see your book.”

Paul was so astonished at being addressed by a young lady, under the circumstances, that he promptly handed over his book, and Lucie, seating herself on the bench, proceeded to read it. Paul was surprised to see that the English book, through which he had been painfully spelling his way, seemed perfectly easy to Lucie, who, without a moment’s hesitation, read on, remarking casually to Paul:

“I can read English as well as I can read French. My mother was an American, you know, and Americans speak English.”

Paul did not know the piece of family history thus confided to him, nor, indeed, did he know anything about this little nymph, but he thought in his honest little heart that she was the most charming vision his boyish eyes had ever rested on. He admired her dainty little slippers, her silk stockings, her general air of fashion, but blushed at finding himself sitting on the same bench with her, particularly as he saw his father the gray-haired advocate, Monsieur Paul Verney, approaching. He was just about to sneak away, leaving his book in the hands of the fair brigand, when a fierce-looking English nursery governess suddenly descended upon them, and, seizing Lucie by the arm, carried her off. The governess threw Paul’s book down on the gravel path, and Paul picked it up.

Somehow, the book seemed to have a different aspect after having been held in the charming little fairy’s hands. Paul was possessed by a wholly new set of emotions. He longed to tell some one of this startling adventure—a little girl planting herself on the bench by him and taking his book from him without the least embarrassment or even apology. What very strange little girls must those be whose mothers were American! Paul had plenty of friends among the boys of his own age and class, and among his school-mates, but he had never confided in any of them as he did in Toni Marcel. So presently, wandering down by the bridge where he was certain to find Toni at this hour of the day, he saw his friend perched in the little cranny which he called his own, on the bridge above the dark and rippling water. Two small boys could be squeezed into this place and Paul Verney, climbing up, sat side by side with Toni, and, with his arm around his friend’s neck, bashfully but delightedly told Toni and Jacques, who, of course, heard everything that was told to Toni, all about this beautiful dream-like creature he had seen in the park. Then Toni said, without any bashfulness at all:

“I have got a sweetheart, too—it is Denise; some day I am going to marry her, and in the morning we will eat candy at mama’s shop, and in the afternoon we will eat cakes at Mademoiselle Duval’s shop.”

Toni’s eyes, as he said this, shone with a dark and lambent light. Paul Verney, on the contrary, had a pair of ordinary light blue eyes through which his honest, tender soul glowed. He was the most romantic boy alive, but all his romantic notions he had carefully concealed from every human being until then. A dream had come into his boyish mind, not of munching bonbons and stuffing cakes, such as Toni’s practical mind had conceived, but a dream of the beautiful Lucie grown up, dressed in a lovely white satin gown, with a tulle veil and orange blossoms, such as he had once seen a young lady wear when she was married to a dashing lieutenant in a dazzling uniform. Paul meant to be a dashing lieutenant in a dazzling uniform some day, and then the vision of Lucie, stealing instantly into his mind, seemed to fill a place already prepared for her there. The two lads sat, Paul’s closely-cropped, reddish hair resting upon Toni’s disheveled black shock, and felt very near together indeed.

“But how will you ever see mademoiselle again?” said Toni to Paul.

Paul’s face grew sad.

“I don’t know how I ever shall,” he said. “I never had a girl speak to me before, and I never played with a girl—I don’t think it’s proper. And the English governess was so cross to Lucie—for so she called her. But I shall walk every day in the park, and perhaps I shall see her again.”

Paul was as good as his word and the very next afternoon walked in the park by himself. He was a neat boy always, but that day his face shone with scrubbing, and he had on his best sailor suit of white linen, and his little cane in his hand. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon, and even the shady paths of the park glowed with a beautiful, mysterious, green light. As Paul walked along, he heard a whisper in his ear. It was Toni, who had crept up from behind a clump of shrubbery and said to him:

“There she is, just down that path, sitting with Captain and Madame Ravenel and holding Madame Ravenel’s hand.”

Paul, following the path, came at once on the bench where sat his divinity, as Toni had described. He doubted if he would have had the courage to bow to her, but Lucie called out:

“Oh, that is the nice little boy who was reading the English book yesterday.”

Paul, blushing up to the roots of his reddish hair, made three bows, one to Madame Ravenel, one to Lucie, and one to Captain Ravenel. Madame Ravenel returned his bow, as did the captain, with much gravity, and Paul passed on, his heart beating with rapture. He had quite often seen the Ravenels and knew them by name. They were apparently the only sad-looking persons in all Bienville. They lived in a small, high, gloomy, old house with a garden at the back, just around the corner from the little street in which Madame Marcel had her shop. Captain Ravenel was a retired officer, but no one ever saw him talking with any of the officers of the garrison, nor was he ever known either to enter any of their houses or to welcome any officers to his house.

Madame Ravenel was the most beautiful woman in Bienville. She was about thirty, but so sad-looking that she seemed much older. She always wore black—not widow’s black or mourning, but black gowns which, although very simple, had an air of elegance that set off her rare beauty wonderfully. Paul had seen her nearly every day since the Ravenels first came to Bienville three years before, but he did not remember ever having seen Lucie until that glorious hour when she burst on his dazzled vision and took his book away from him. From the time he could first remember seeing Madame Ravenel he had never passed her without a feeling coming into his boyish soul like that when he saw the moon looking down on the dark water under the bridge, or heard the melancholy song of the nightingale in the evening. He had confided this feeling to Toni, who answered that both he and Jacques felt the same way when they saw Madame Ravenel. There was something sad, beautiful, touching and interesting about her. Paul could not put it into words, but he felt it, as did many other people.

Madame Ravenel went to church every morning, and when Paul was dressing himself in his little bedroom, off from his father’s and mother’s room, he could always see her returning from church. And what was most remarkable to Paul, Captain Ravenel was always either with Madame Ravenel or not far behind her. He did not go into the church, but, with a book or a newspaper in his hand, walked up and down outside until Madame Ravenel appeared, when he would escort her home. And so it was almost always the case, when Madame Ravenel appeared on the street that Captain Ravenel was not far away. It would seem as if he kept within protecting distance. He was a soldierly-appearing man, serious-looking, his hair and mustache slightly gray.

Madame Ravenel was always beautiful, always sad, always gentle, and always in black. Paul had noticed, in passing the church sometimes, that Madame Ravenel never went beyond the entrance and never sat down, even on Sundays. She only went a few steps inside the church door, and Paul asked his mother why this was. Madame Verney shut him up shortly with that well-known maxim that little boys should not ask questions. Sometime after that, Paul, still wondering about Madame Ravenel, asked his father why she looked so sad, and why Captain Ravenel never stopped and laughed and talked with the officers walking the streets, or dining at the cafés, or strolling in the park, and Monsieur Verney gave him the same reply as Madame Verney, which was most discouraging.

This, of course, did not cause Paul’s interest in the Ravenels to abate in the least. It only convinced him that they had some strange and interesting story, such as having found a pot of gold somewhere, or having had their only child stolen from them, or some of those delightfully romantic tales which a twelve-year-old boy can imagine. He was no less interested in Lucie on finding that she belonged in some way to Madame Ravenel. He had walked on a considerable distance in the park, and was trying to screw up his courage to turn around and walk back past the bench where Lucie sat, when he suddenly found her at his side. Her dark eyes glowed brightly and she was tiptoeing in her delight.

“I know all about you,” she said triumphantly. “You are Paul Verney, the advocate’s son. I like little boys very much—very much—but I never have a chance to see anything of them. However, just now I began to chase a butterfly and my sister Sophie did not call me back. But you are the butterfly,”—and at this she burst into a ripple of impish laughter.

Paul was so surprised that he did not have time to be shocked at the boldness on the part of this young lady of ten years, but his heart began to thump violently and he was trembling when he said to her:

“But aren’t you afraid to leave your sister?”

“Not in the least,” replied Lucie airily. “I am half American, and American children are not afraid of anything, so Harper, my nursery governess, says. What can happen to me? And besides that, I have always had my own way—that is, almost always—I had it about coming to see my sister Sophie. Would you like me to tell you about it?”

Paul was only too charmed to hear anything Lucie might tell him, although in a panic for fear the fierce-looking English nursery governess might appear. Lucie, without further ado, seated herself with him on the ground and, sticking her little slippered feet out on the grass, began, with the air of Scheherazade, when with confidence she turned her matchless power on the bridegroom who meant to murder her next morning:

“Sophie, you know, is my sister, although she is much older than I am. We had the same papa, but not the same mama, but Sophie was just like a mama to me after my own mama died. She was married then to another man named Count Delorme. How I hated him! He was so cross—cross to me and cross to Sophie and cross to everybody. He had a son, too, when Sophie married him, and that boy—Edouard was his name—was horrid, just like Count Delorme. I lived with Sophie then, and once a year I would go and visit my Grandmother Bernard. She is very tall and handsome and always wears black velvet or black satin and looks very fierce. Everybody is afraid of her except me. But she isn’t really in the least fierce, and I have my own way with her much more than I have with Sophie. All that grandmama can do is to scold and say, ‘Oh, you little American, what am I to do with you? You need more strictness than any French child I ever knew,’ and then she lets me do as I please.”

Lucie stopped here and cast a side glance at Paul. She possessed the art of the story-teller and wanted to know whether Paul was interested in what she was telling him. Paul was so much interested in Lucie that he would have listened with pleasure to anything she said, but the beginning of what she was telling him sounded like a book, and he listened with eagerness. Lucie, seeing this, proceeded. Like many other people, she enjoyed being the heroine of her own tale, and it lost nothing in the telling.

“Well, I used to like this visit to my grandmother—she has a big château, larger than the commandant’s house, five times as large—bigger than the Hotel de Ville.”

Lucie opened her arms and hands wide to show Paul the enormous size of the Château Bernard.

“And then she has such beautiful things—so many servants, carriages, horses, chandeliers, and gardens—the most beautiful gardens, and a park ten times as large as this.”

Paul listened to this somewhat coldly. He did not like bragging and could not understand the innocent, imaginative delight which Lucie took in describing a pretty château.

“I used to love to go there and visit grandmama when I lived with Sophie. We lived in another place—a great big city called Châlons. But I loved being with Sophie best. She was not at all like what she is now, but she was the gayest person in Châlons. She wore beautiful pink gowns, and white hats, and feathers, and went to balls every night, but she always had time to look after me. She used to take me in the carriage with her every afternoon to drive, and before she went to a ball she always saw me undressed and in my bed and came to tell me good night. And she looked over my lessons and made me practise my music and did everything for me, just as the other little girls’ mamas did for them. Then something happened—I don’t know what it was—it was something dreadful, though, and I remember the day. It rained very hard, and Captain Ravenel came in the afternoon and was sitting in the drawing-room with Sophie, and Count Delorme came in, and there was a terrible noise, and the door came open, and Count Delorme struck Sophie with his fist hard, and Captain Ravenel caught her in his arms. I was leaning over the baluster, and then Harper ran down, and carried me off, and would not let me go near Sophie, though I heard her crying outside the door, and I cried inside the door just as hard as I could. The next day Harper—that is my nursery governess that takes care of me now and dragged me away yesterday—came and took me in a carriage to the railway station, without letting me say good-by to Sophie, and carried me off to my grandmama’s château.”

Paul was interested enough now. Lucie’s story sounded more and more like a story out of a book.

“When I came to the château, my grandmother—she is Sophie’s grandmama just as much as she is mine—kissed me, and hugged me, and told me I was to live there, but I was very angry because I hadn’t seen Sophie to say good-by even, and I kept asking why Sophie didn’t come to see me or send for me or even write me a letter. I used to write her letters myself—you see, I am ten years old and I can write very well—and I gave them to grandmama to send to Sophie, but I found a whole bunch of my letters half-burned in the grate in grandmama’s room. Then I saw they were deceiving me, so I wrote a letter and I stole a postage stamp, and I knew how to address it to Sophie, but I got no reply. Then I stole some more postage stamps, and wrote some more letters, but I never heard anything about Sophie. I had a governess and music-master, but grandmama never made me study or practise my music as Sophie had done. She let me do everything I wanted except to see or hear from Sophie. No matter what I asked for, grandmama first refused and then she got it for me. She bought me the finest doll in Paris and a little pony and wicker phaeton, and used to take me to the circus—my grandmama lives near Paris, you know—and gave me five francs of my own to spend every Saturday. But I wanted Sophie. At night I would think about her, and cry and cry, and then grandmama would have me put in her bed and she would cry, too, but she would not let me see Sophie. At last I couldn’t eat anything—not even bonbons—and they sent for the doctor, who said grandmama must take me to the sea-shore, but after we came from the sea-shore I missed Sophie more and more, and I cried every night and would not eat, and at last I told grandmama if she did not let me see Sophie I would starve myself to death—I would never eat anything—I would hold my breath until I died—or eat a cake of paint out of my paint-box. Paint is poisonous, you know. Grandmama told me of a little girl who died from eating paint out of her paint-box. At last even the doctor grew frightened, and told grandmama if I did not see my sister Sophie he was afraid I would be very ill, so then—this was two summers ago—she let Harper bring me here, and I stayed a whole week with Sophie. Captain Ravenel is her husband now, and not that hateful Count Delorme, and I didn’t know Captain Ravenel before, but I love him now almost as much as I do Sophie. He is so kind and good, and not a bit cross. Sophie told me that I must be satisfied with my week with her, and must be good, and perhaps grandmama would let me come again, and that when I went back to the Château Bernard I must eat and keep well and not cry any more. I did as Sophie told me, but Sophie doesn’t know grandmama as well as I do. I begged her all last winter to let me come and see Sophie again, and all this spring, and then this summer, but she wouldn’t let me, and then I found out how to manage grandmama.”

Paul listened to this with an interest which bordered, however, on disapproval. He had never heard of small children managing their elders, but Lucie had told him that she was half American, which might account for anything. Paul had heard that the Americans were a wild people, so perhaps even the children did as they pleased. Lucie drew up her little silk-stockinged foot, and settled her skirts around her.

“And how do you suppose I did it? I didn’t eat anything for two days. Grandmama was frightened to death. When I wouldn’t eat, they left cakes around, and beautiful little biscuit, but I knew what that was for and wouldn’t touch them; so after three days grandmama gave in and told me that Harper might bring me to see Sophie, and so I came, and I am to stay two whole weeks, and after this every time I wish to see Sophie, all I will have to do is to stop eating, for that frightens grandmama and she lets me have my own way.”

Paul eyed the bewitching Lucie still with some disapproval.

“But do you think it is right to treat your grandmama so? Isn’t she a good grandmama to you?”

“Oh yes, indeed,” answered Lucie. “I love her very much, but not like Sophie. You love your aunts and grandmama, but not like your mother.”

That was quite true, for Paul was as fond, in his quiet way, of his mother and father, as Lucie, in her violent and demonstrative fashion was of Sophie, or as Toni was curiously fond of Madame Marcel.

CHAPTER III

While this conversation was going on, Toni, who had seen Lucie go chasing after the butterfly, watched Captain and Madame Ravenel. Paul had told him there was something mysterious about the pair, and Toni was vaguely conscious of this strangeness, and felt in his childish, ignorant way, like Paul, the charm of Madame Ravenel’s touching beauty. He heard Madame Ravenel say:

“What can have become of the child?” and Captain Ravenel got up at once to look for her, going a little way along the path down which Lucie had disappeared. And then a strange thing happened before Toni’s eyes. A young officer coming by, with a waxed mustache and his cap set jauntily on the side of his head, stopped directly in front of Madame Ravenel, and looked at her with a smile which Toni did not at all understand, but which made Madame Ravenel’s pale face flush to the roots of her dark hair. Then the officer said, in an insolent yet insinuating voice:

“May I be permitted, Madame, to admire your beauty a little closer?”—and sat down on the bench without any invitation, throwing his arm around the back of it so as almost to embrace Madame Ravenel, who started up with a cry. At that moment, Captain Ravenel appeared at the back of the bench. He was not so big a man as the young officer, but, catching him by his collar, he threw him sprawling on the ground, and then deliberately stamped upon him as he lay prostrate. Madame Ravenel stood as still as a statue. The officer sprang from the ground and would have flown at Captain Ravenel’s throat, but two other officers passing ran toward them and separated them, and pinioned the arms of the officer to his side. Toni heard Captain Ravenel say, as he handed his card to one of the officers:

“I saw this man grossly insult this lady, and he shall pay for it with his life,”—and then Madame Ravenel swayed a minute or two and fell over in a dead faint. The two officers hurried their comrade off, leaving Captain Ravenel alone with Madame Ravenel, who lay prone on the grass, quite insensible.

Toni remembered having once seen a lady faint in the park, and that some one fetched water from the fountain close by, and dashed it on her face, but he had nothing to fetch it in, having no hat on his head—a hat being a useless incumbrance which he only wore on those rare Sundays when his mother dragged him to church against his earnest protests. But there was Paul Verney’s hat. Toni scampered down the path and in two minutes had found Paul. Lucie was just leaving him, and Toni, mysteriously beckoning to him, whispered:

“Fill your cap with water and take it to Madame Ravenel. She is lying on the grass fainting like I saw a lady once, and somebody at that time threw water on the lady.”

Paul, with the true lover’s instinct to serve those loved by his adored one, ran to the fountain and filled his cap with water, and then flew as fast as his legs would carry him to the place where Madame Ravenel still lay. Most of the water was spilled over his white linen suit, but there was enough left to revive Madame Ravenel.

“Thank you, my boy,” said Captain Ravenel, as he dashed the water on Madame Ravenel’s face. Then she opened her eyes and tried to stand up. Paul ran for more water, and came back with about a tablespoonful left in his cap, while he himself was dripping like a water spaniel. But Madame Ravenel, by that time, was sitting up on the bench, pale, with her dark hair disheveled, and her hat still lying on the ground. Captain Ravenel was supporting her.

Paul Verney, being a gentleman at twelve years of age, felt instinctively that having done a service it was his place to retire. He received a tremulous “Thank you” from Madame Ravenel, who then asked anxiously of Captain Ravenel:

“Where is Lucie—what has become of the child?”

But Lucie at that moment appeared, and Paul, longing to remain and hear more interesting stories about grown people from Lucie’s cherry lips, still felt bound to retire, which he did.

Toni, on the contrary, making no pretensions to being a gentleman, had to see the whole thing played through. He concealed himself behind the shrubbery, and saw with pain, but with deep interest, Madame Ravenel weep a little—tears which Captain Ravenel tried to check. Then, in a moment, Harper appeared and Lucie went off, her usually sparkling, dimpling little face quite sorrowful; and then Madame Ravenel, leaning on Captain Ravenel’s arm, walked away.

Toni stood and pondered these things to himself. What queer creatures grown people were after all! Still they were very interesting if one got rid of all their scrapes and muddles. What did that dashing-looking officer want to put his arm around Madame Ravenel for? Toni, reflecting on these things, took Jacques out and asked him about them, but Jacques replied that he knew no more about them than Toni did.

That night Toni, not being made to go to bed at eight o’clock like Paul Verney and all other well-conducted boys, was prowling around the garden of the commandant’s house, of which the back was toward the little street in which Madame Marcel lived. The garden gate was open, and Toni sneaked in and seated himself on the grass, just outside the window on the ground floor which looked into a room that was Colonel Duquesne’s study.

Toni had an object in this. There was a great clump of gooseberry bushes under this window, and Toni loved to gorge himself on Colonel Duquesne’s gooseberries. True, he could have had all the gooseberries he wished from his mother, but they did not have the delicious flavor of those surreptitiously confiscated from Colonel Duquesne’s garden. Toni was afraid of the commandant, as he was afraid of the monument in the public square and of old Marie, and of everybody, in fact, except his mother, and Paul Verney, and little Denise, and Jacques. But he knew the garden much better than the commandant did, and his short legs were quick enough to save him in case any one should come out of the house.

Toni saw, through the window, the two officers, who had separated the other officer and Captain Ravenel, sitting in grave conversation with the colonel.

“It is most unfortunate!” said the colonel, a grave-looking, gray-mustached man. “What could have induced Ravenel to come to Bienville to live? It would seem to be the last place on earth that he and Madame Ravenel would select.”

Then one of the other officers said to the colonel:

“I understand that they came here principally on account of Madame Ravenel’s health, and besides, Ravenel owns the house in which they live. It isn’t much of a house, but I hear that Delorme spent every franc of Madame Ravenel’s money, and they have nothing but this house and Ravenel’s half-pay to live on, which probably accounts for their being in Bienville. But I must say that they have kept themselves as much out of sight as possible.”

“I knew Delorme,” said the colonel, “and a more unprincipled scoundrel never lived. It is a great pity that Ravenel didn’t knock the fellow’s brains out on the day when Madame Delorme left Delorme. Nobody would have been sorry for it. I have known both Ravenel and Madame Ravenel for years, and they are the last people living that I should expect to commit the folly they did, going off together and remaining two or three weeks before they separated. It was a species of madness, but they have paid dearly for it. I understand that Madame Ravenel is tormented by religious scruples about her divorce.”

The colonel got up from his chair and walked up and down two or three times. The vision of Sophie Ravenel in her triumphant beauty ten years before, and the pale conscience-stricken Sophie of to-day, overwhelmed him. He remembered Ravenel, spirited, gay, and caring for no other than a soldier’s life, and now cut off from all comrades, his life-work ended. Surely these two had paid the full price for their three weeks’ desperate folly, of love, shame, rapture and despair. Then awakening suddenly to the madness of what they had done, they had separated, not to see each other again until Delorme had obtained a divorce; and Sophie, after having been branded as a wife who had dishonored her husband, was married to Ravenel, who, for her sake, had sacrificed all his worldly prospects. The colonel was a strict moralist, but in his heart he reckoned that there were many worse people in the world than Sophie and Ravenel. The two officers sat silent while the colonel took a couple of turns about the room, and then he sat down and spoke again:

“But the question is—what are we to do about Creci?”

“Creci swears,” said the older of the two officers, “that Madame Ravenel smiled at him as he passed and gave him an invitation to come and sit by her.”

“I am afraid,” said the colonel, in a very cold voice, as he shook the ash from his cigar, “that Creci is mistaken.”

“Mistaken!” thought Toni to himself, “Creci was lying, pure and simple.” That Toni knew, for he had seen the whole transaction.

“We are bound, under the circumstances,” said Captain Merrilat, “to take Lieutenant Creci’s word for it. Naturally Madame Ravenel’s word can not be taken.”

Colonel Duquesne pondered for a while, stroking his mustache, and then said:

“Come to me in two days—I will see what can be done,”—and then, after a little more talk, the two officers got up and went away, and Colonel Duquesne strolled out in the garden where Toni was still behind the gooseberry bushes.

The colonel knew the Widow Marcel’s boy and disapproved of him on general principles, but did not suspect the little scamp was hidden behind the gooseberry bushes which the colonel passed as he walked up and down the dark path. As he turned to pass the third time, he heard Tom’s shrill, boyish voice piping out:

“You know, Jacques, I saw it all—I was watching Captain and Madame Ravenel, and I saw Captain Ravenel when he got up and went away—and then the young officer came along, and Madame Ravenel wasn’t looking his way at all—she was looking down with her hands in her lap, and I don’t think she even saw the lieutenant until he came up to her quite close and said something impudent to her, and then Madame Ravenel’s face got as red as red could be, and the lieutenant plumped himself down as close to her as he could and threw his arm around the back of the bench, and Madame Ravenel looked scared to death and jumped up, and then Captain Ravenel came and caught the lieutenant by the collar and threw him on the ground and wiped his foot on him, and you know, Jacques, you saw that just as I did.”

The colonel stopped suddenly in his walk, and looking about, saw Toni’s little black head among the gooseberry bushes. He did not see the other boy with whom Toni was talking, but he understood well enough what Toni meant. Then Toni kept on:

“Jacques, I tell you, Madame Ravenel wasn’t even looking at the lieutenant, and I know she hates him by the way she pushed him off when he sat down by her.”

The colonel walked around the gooseberry bushes and there sat Toni on the ground, but Jacques, whom the colonel innocently supposed to be another boy, was not in sight, being then in Toni’s pocket.

“So, my lad,” said the colonel, “you saw the fight between Captain Ravenel and Lieutenant Creci?”

But Toni, looking up at the colonel’s short, soldierly figure and determined air, was seized with one of those sudden panics which often overcame him. He could not have said a word to save his life, with the colonel’s keen eyes fixed on him. So, jumping up and seizing hold of Jacques in his pocket, Toni ran as fast as his legs would take him to the garden gate, through the narrow street, and up into his own little attic room, and did not feel safe until he was tucked in his own bed with Jacques under the pillow to keep him company.

It was the habit of the colonel to take a walk in the park very early every morning directly after his breakfast coffee, and it was also Captain Ravenel’s practice to pass through the park at the same hour. His, however, was not a pleasure stroll, but was for the purpose of taking to the post-office some hundreds of envelopes which he addressed every day for a pittance, with which to eke out his half-pay. The two men had been friends in past days, although the colonel was much older and higher in rank than Ravenel, but they passed each other morning after morning without a word being exchanged, Ravenel gravely saluting the colonel, and the colonel slightly returning the bow, and each man felt a tug at his heart for the other man.

Colonel Duquesne was a great stickler for the moralities, and Ravenel’s fall had been to him a terrible shock. He understood what little Lucie, and Paul Verney, and Toni did not understand in the least, the particular thing which had befallen Madame Ravenel. It was the old, sad story of a villainous husband to a sensitive and dependent woman, of a man a thousand times better than the husband loving the wife silently, of hearing her unjustly accused in his presence, and even suffering the indignity of a blow. That blow drove Sophie Delorme into Ravenel’s arms. It seemed to her, in the horror and shock of the moment, as if there were no other place for her. She could not go to her grandmother, Madame Bernard, who had arranged the match between Sophie and Delorme and who had shut her eyes stubbornly to the wretchedness of the marriage. Apart from Madame Bernard, Sophie was singularly alone in the world. Her small fortune had been squandered by Delorme. She loved Ravenel because she could not help it, and so these two poor souls, like goodly ships driven against each other by storms and hurricanes, to their destruction, this man and this woman were driven together, driven to transgress the moral law, driven by the iron hand of fate into a position, the last on earth that would have been expected of them.

The victory of passion and despair over honor had been brief. In three weeks they recoiled from what they had done. Delorme had promptly begun proceedings for a divorce and Ravenel had besought Sophie to repair their fault as far as possible in the eyes of the world by marrying him as soon as the decree of divorce should be granted. But Sophie was a deeply religious woman and it seemed to her an increase of wrong-doing to marry Ravenel. There was but one way out of it and Ravenel, by employing one of the best ecclesiastical lawyers in France, discovered that there were certain technicalities in the religious marriage that Delorme had not complied with, and it was possible to have the marriage, religious as well as civil, annulled. Only then did Sophie consent to marry him. For her he had sacrificed his position in the army, his standing in the world and his modest fortune, and had done it as if it were a privilege instead of a sacrifice.

No woman of Sophie Ravenel’s lofty ideals could fail to appreciate this, but neither could she forget that she had fallen from her high estate. However she might strive to be happy, Ravenel could not but see that she would live and die a conscience-stricken woman. She made no moan, however, but secretly took on herself the whole sin. Ravenel did the same, taking on himself all the blame. And so their married life, although sad and colorless, was one of exquisite harmony. They led a most retired life, rarely leaving their house except for Sophie’s early visit to the church and the walk in the park in the afternoons. Whenever she appeared on the street, as Paul often had noticed, Ravenel was never far away, and Sophie, had any affront been offered her, had his protection close at hand. To them one place was the same as another and, as Colonel Duquesne had imagined, necessity had much to do with their settling in Bienville. An officer on half-pay has not much choice of residence, and the little old house in Bienville at least gave them a shelter. So they had come, bringing their remorse with them, likewise their love.

The wages of sin in their case was not luxury. They lived as poorly as gentle people could live and exist. They kept no servant, and as it was painful for them to have to dine at the cafés, Sophie, with the assistance of one old woman who was still active at seventy-five, prepared all their meals. With her own hands she made those cheap and simple black gowns whose fit and style were the despair and admiration of the professional dressmakers in Bienville. In this matter of her dress and appearance, Sophie retained all the pride which had ever been hers when she was, as little Lucie said, the gayest and best-dressed woman in Châlons. It was a part of a duty that she owed Ravenel, for with the fine generosity of a woman she reckoned herself much in Ravenel’s debt, and felt she should lose as few as possible of those charms that had won him to his downfall. She never lost her appearance of elegance, by dint of an ingenuity, little short of miraculous. She uttered no complaining word, and no day passed over her head that she did not tell Ravenel he was the best man in the world.

There was a wheezy old piano in the little house, and on this she played to him the airs that had charmed him in the days at Châlons. She was externally the most modest and reserved woman in Bienville,—and who shall say that she was not the same in her soul? Be not too free, you virtuous people, to condemn this poor lady; there are sinners and sinners, if you please.

“Not daring so much as to lift her eyes to the altar.”

As for Captain Ravenel, his wrong-doing had placed on him, according to his way of thinking, an obligation of a life most spotless. He had always been, as Colonel Duquesne had said, a man of high character, but when love and misery and fate had made him, in a way, the destroyer of the woman he loved and respected most on earth, it raised him to a pitch of heroic virtue. Like Sophie, no drudgery was too great for him and when she was preparing their modest dinner, Captain Ravenel was digging in the garden. By the labor of his own hands, he raised the most beautiful pease, potatoes and melons that had ever been seen. He would have worked every hour of the day, except that he felt as Sophie did with regard to him, that he must not lose all of those graces and habits of a gentleman which had first made her love him. In the afternoon he dressed himself in his well-brushed frock coat and together he and Sophie took a walk, and sat and listened to the band playing in the park. This was their chief recreation. At night he sat up many hours addressing those envelopes and circulars which he took to the post-office early in the morning and for which he was paid a pittance. Like Sophie, no complaint escaped him, and for every protestation of love and gratitude she made to him, he returned in twofold. They were not happy—life had no happiness to give two souls like theirs, situated as they were—but they would have died if they had been torn apart.

It was a portion of Sophie’s self-imposed punishment that she should never go fully into a church, halting, as Paul Verney had noticed, just within the door, and, like the publican, not daring so much as to lift her eyes to the altar, but calling herself a sinner and feeling herself to be the greatest sinner on earth. Another part of her punishment was the separation from Lucie, the little half-sister whom she had attended from the hour of her birth with a mother’s care, and toward whom she had taken a mother’s place. But she made no complaint of this, nor of anything else; and when Lucie, by her own ingenuity, had contrived to come back to her, it brought a gleam of joy into Sophie’s life such as she had never expected to feel again.

Madame Bernard remained unforgiving. As Lucie had truly said, although as stern and uncompromising in looks as the monument in the public square at Bienville and old Marie who sat on the bench and knitted sternly, Madame Bernard was, at heart, a greater coward about people than little Toni. She knew if she once saw Sophie everything would be forgiven, and so she avoided seeing her, and dared not even write to her. Little Lucie had had no real difficulty in accomplishing her object of seeing Sophie by the means she had retailed to Paul, and otherwise wrapped the stately Madame Bernard around her little finger.

Lucie, who was accustomed to luxury, adapted herself with ingenuous perversity to the plain way of living of the Ravenels. She even learned to make omelettes herself, and with her little lace-trimmed gown tucked up around her waist, to the horror of Harper, the nursery governess, actually learned to broil a chop as well as Sophie could.

Lucie was a child of many passions. Her attachment to Sophie was one of the strongest, and Sophie alone, of everybody on earth, could bend Lucie to her will,—that is, as long as they were together, for, childlike, Lucie forgot all the gentle commands and recommendations laid upon her by Sophie when they separated, and remembered few of the admirable things which Sophie asked her to do. But she loved Sophie with a determined constancy that none of Madame Bernard’s blandishments nor all the bonbons in Paris could change.

CHAPTER IV

At the hour when Colonel Duquesne and the two officers were discussing Creci’s insult to Sophie—for insult they all well knew it to be—Sophie and Ravenel were sitting on their balcony after their supper, and Lucie had been put to bed. Sophie had not spoken to Ravenel of what had happened in the park since their agitated walk home, but now she said timidly, placing her hand in his, in the soft purple twilight which enveloped them, and through which the lights of the town twinkled beneath them:

“What do you think that man Creci will do?”

“Prefer charges against me, I suppose,” returned Ravenel, “but if he does, I think he will get the worst of it. No one could believe that you, Sophie, could give any encouragement to a man like that. Your life here has been too prudent. No other woman, I believe, could have lived with the beauty and natural gaiety that you possess, effacing herself so completely, and all for me. What an evil hour for you, dearest, that ever we met!”

“Do not say that,” cried Sophie. “If I had it all to live over again, I would do as I have done except—except—”

She buried her face in her hands. Ravenel, too, looked ashamed. To both of them the iron entered into their souls at the recollection of the first three weeks after Sophie left her husband. Then Sophie, raising her head, presently said:

“But it was an evil hour for you. I might have endured my fate, while but for me you would have married happily, and be to-day where you ought to be—in a good position, with your talents recognized and—”

The two poor souls often talked together in this way, speaking frankly to each other, and each taking the blame. They spoke a while longer, each fearing and dreading the morrow, and then Sophie went to see that Lucie was asleep in her little bed, while Ravenel went to his work of addressing envelopes.

Lucie was not asleep, as she should have been, but wide-awake and very talkative.

“Oh, Sophie,” she said, when Sophie sat down by the bed in Lucie’s little room, “how glad I am that you are married to Captain Ravenel! I like him so much better than Count Delorme. Sophie, I hated Count Delorme!”

“So did I,” replied Sophie, her pale face flushing, and her tongue for once committing an indiscretion. But the child was quite unconscious of it. She hated Count Delorme herself, and saw every reason why Sophie and every one else should hate him.

“And Edouard,” continued Lucie, “that hateful, hateful boy! Oh, I think it is ever so much nicer as it is, and if only I could live with you, and make omelettes every day, and have a little garden and dig in it when Captain Ravenel is digging in the big garden, how much I should like it, and then I could go and visit grandmama at the château.”

Sophie laid her head down on the pillow by Lucie, and kissed the child’s soft red lips. After all, how happy she could be but for that terrible moral law which, because they had transgressed it, kept thundering in her ears its maledictions.

But no shame and no sorrow can wholly take away the joy of loving and being loved as Sophie loved and was loved.

Next morning, about seven o’clock, as Ravenel was walking through the park to the post-office with his parcel of circulars, he came face to face with Colonel Duquesne. The colonel, instead of passing him with a stiff nod, halted before him, and said:

“Good morning, Captain Ravenel.”

Ravenel was startled, but he replied, saluting respectfully:

“Good morning, sir.”

“There is, I am afraid, some trouble ahead of you with regard to Lieutenant Creci,” said the colonel, speaking very deliberately. “I wish to say now, from long knowledge of the lady in the case, that I can not believe she committed the smallest impropriety, nor do I think that Creci’s word that she did so would carry the slightest conviction to any person in Bienville; and whatever comes of it, the lady’s name must be kept out of the affair absolutely.”

Ravenel could have fallen upon his knees with gratitude when Colonel Duquesne said this. The idea that Sophie’s name should be dragged into a public scandal was heart-breaking to him. The tears came into his eyes, and he was about to extend his hand impulsively to Colonel Duquesne, but changed his mind, and crossed his arms.

He bowed, however, profoundly, and said:

“I can not express to you, sir, how much I thank you for what you have said. It is well-deserved by that lady, who is the most modest, the most retiring, the purest-minded—”

Ravenel stopped with a lump in his throat. The tears by that time had dropped upon his dark, sunburned face. He brushed them away, but Colonel Duquesne thought no less of him for those tears.

“I am quite of your mind,” he said quietly, “concerning that lady. The circumstances are most unfortunate. I can express to you, privately, a degree of sympathy which I can not do publicly, but believe me, no man could be more anxious than I am to save that lady’s feelings in this affair. Captain Merrilat will wait on you this morning. I think if you will agree to make him a very slight apology, everything can be arranged, and, for my part, I pledge you my word, as Lieutenant Creci’s commanding officer, to use all the power I possess to induce him to accept anything in the shape of an apology which you may offer.”

“But I can not apologize,” blurted out poor Ravenel. “The lady in question was sitting quietly on the bench, and did not even see Creci, and he came up and spoke to her insultingly, and the lady became embarrassed and alarmed, and then he sat down by her most impudently and improperly, and attempted to throw his arm around her, and then I caught him and thrashed him—and am I to apologize for that?”

The colonel paused. The story which he had overheard that naughty little boy of Madame Marcel’s telling the night before in the garden corresponded exactly with what Ravenel had said,—not that Ravenel’s word alone needed any corroboration with Colonel Duquesne.

“Yes,” he said, “you must say something which may be construed into an apology. Not a man in the regiment sustains Creci’s course, but for reasons which you understand, the chief of which is the lady in the case, it must be hushed up. I have arranged for you to meet Creci this morning at my house and the affair shall be settled before me.”

Ravenel, with his soul in his eyes, looked at the colonel, who was a man with a heart in his breast, even though he was a colonel; and then the colonel held out his hand. Ravenel gripped it for a moment and then hurried away through the park that he might not miss the morning mail, for he was as careful and prompt in the performance of his duty with regard to these circulars, which he addressed at next to nothing a thousand, as if it had been the best-paid and most important work in the world.

But his heart was more joyful than it had been for many a day. He had something pleasant to take back to Sophie. When he returned, and they had their eleven o’clock breakfast together in the little garden, he looked so cheerful that Sophie felt almost gay. They sat with Lucie at the little round table with a white cloth on it, under a big acacia tree. Close by them were a dozen tall oleanders in tubs, for Captain Ravenel, turning his unusual skill in flowers to account, supplied most of the cafés in town with their ornamental plants. Their breakfast was simple, but very good, and Lucie triumphed in the production of the omelette which was the work of her own hands. She was already lamenting that in one week more she would have to go back to the Château Bernard, and Madame Bernard’s chef.

“Oh, it is so nice to be with you here!” she cried, and then said, as she had done two or three times before: “It is so much nicer than at Châlons—and I hated Count Delorme!”

As she spoke the name, Ravenel looked away, while poor Sophie blushed and trembled, but Lucie, meaning to please her hosts, kept on:

“When I am grown up, and get my money, I intend to come and live with you, Sophie and Captain Ravenel. Harper says that when I am eighteen I shall have a whole lot of money in America that grandmama can not keep me out of, and that I can spend it as I like, and I will come and live in Bienville and have a carriage and everything I want, but I think I would like to stay in this house—it is small, but so very pleasant.”

“Harper should not tell you such things, Lucie,” said Sophie. She looked at Captain Ravenel. It is impossible to keep nursery governesses and upper servants from gossiping,—how much had she told Lucie in the past, and how much might she tell her in the future?

Presently Lucie was sent away to practise on the piano, for it was a part of Sophie’s plan that, when Lucie returned to her grandmother after these brief and forced visits, the child should show some improvement.

Then Ravenel told Sophie that as soon as he finished breakfast, he was to go to Colonel Duquesne’s house, and have the meeting with Creci, and he repeated the colonel’s chivalrous words to her. Sophie’s pale face flamed up. It was something in the arid waste of life to have known two such men as the one before her and Colonel Duquesne, who would not strike a woman when she was helpless before him, and who pitied the weaknesses of the human heart.

“But when it comes to apologizing,” said Ravenel, grinding his teeth, “what am I to say?—to say that I am sorry for having kicked him, when I wished to kill him?”

“Dearest,” replied Sophie, “do what the colonel advises. He would not counsel you to do anything against your honor.”

At twelve o’clock precisely, Ravenel presented himself at the colonel’s house. He was in his uniform, for, although retired, he was still an officer. The soldiers saluted him respectfully, and the aides spoke to him politely. Everybody felt sorry for Ravenel, and most honest and brave men in his place would have done as he had. He was ushered into the colonel’s room, and there sat Colonel Duquesne and Creci, with his two friends, the officers who had dragged Ravenel and himself apart in the park. The colonel and others present bowed gravely to Ravenel, who returned the bow and seated himself at the colonel’s invitation, and then after a little silence the colonel stated the case briefly, but said at the end, with emphasis:

“I think in every case of this sort, without impugning Lieutenant Creci’s word, the presumption is that a mistake has been made. Whatever Lieutenant Creci thought about the lady in question, whose name must, by no means, be mentioned, I feel sure that she was unconscious of any attempt to attract his attention. We will proceed upon that supposition, if you please.”

Creci’s handsome, stupid face grew scarlet, Ravenel’s dark skin turned a shade darker, the other two officers looked impassive. Then the colonel went on to say that he would recommend Captain Ravenel to make an apology to Lieutenant Creci, and he would strongly urge Lieutenant Creci to accept it. At that there was a long silence. Ravenel really knew not how to apologize for having done what his honor and his conscience and his inclination had told him was right to do. He blamed himself for not having stamped his foot in Creci’s face, and so marked him for life. The pause became awkward while Ravenel was turning these things over in his mind. At last, with the colonel’s eye fixed upon him commandingly, he mumbled something about regretting that the occasion had arisen—the rest of it was lost in his mustache, for the colonel, as soon as he heard the word regret, turned promptly to Creci. There was a menace in Colonel Duquesne’s eye—a look which commanded obedience. Creci, inwardly raging, sullenly bowed, and Captain Merrilat said quickly:

“I think Lieutenant Creci accepts the apology, and we may consider the affair as ended.”

Everybody present knew what Colonel Duquesne meant. He had known Sophie when she was fresh from her convent school, had known her as the young wife of an unfeeling and vicious man—he had known her at the moment when her courage failed her, and she had left the hard and stony path she had been traveling with Delorme to go on a path still hard and stony with Ravenel. Colonel Duquesne was tender-hearted where women were concerned, and felt in his soul that he could not have stood Delorme as long as Sophie had stood him. All these things were working in his mind when Ravenel and Creci and the two officers were rising and making their formal adieus.

Ravenel went home to Sophie and the two were almost gay over the result of the affair which had been so baneful to them in the beginning. It almost seemed to the two poor souls as if they had some friends left. That very afternoon, when taking their one solitary indulgence—their walk in the park—they passed the colonel, who bowed to Sophie quite in the old way, although he did not speak. The colonel was a widower with no daughters and, therefore, was quite safe in doing this, not having a domestic court of inquiry ahead of him.

CHAPTER V

Lucie had only four days more to remain in Bienville, but, except for the approaching parting from Sophie and Ravenel, they were indeed very happy days to her. The child’s active and aggressive little mind, which was part of her American inheritance, dwelt on that charming vision which Harper, with the usual indiscretion of servants and nursery governesses, had shown her—that vision of all the money she wished to spend, which would be hers at eighteen, with no one, not even Madame Bernard, to interfere.

Lucie enjoyed another stolen interview with Paul Verney, for this young lady, at ten years of age, was a well-developed flirt and romanticist. Not all her French training had been able to get the American out of her, and she had with it all the generous impulses and the happy daring with which the American child seems to be dowered.

Paul Verney, in his afternoon walks, had the pleasure of bowing twice to Captain and Madame Ravenel, but neither time was Lucie with them. On the afternoon before Lucie left Bienville, she was walking with the Ravenels, Harper, as usual, in the distance. Lucie, with the ingenuity peculiar to her age and sex, determined to go on a search for Paul Verney, and so arranged her plans with much art.

She asked Sophie if Harper could take her to the fountain in the park to see the little fishes swim in the basin. This reasonable proposal being agreed to, Harper took Lucie by the hand, and off they went. Once at the fountain, around which there were benches, Harper was sure to find some of her colleagues, and Lucie, providing she reported at the end of every ten minutes, was certain of an hour of liberty.

Lucie utilized her first ten minutes by finding Paul Verney. There he was, sitting on the same bench and reading the same English book as on the first afternoon that she had spoken to him. When Paul saw his lady-love approach he rose and blushed and smiled, and Lucie bowed and smiled, without blushing, however. Seating herself on the bench, and settling her fluffy white skirts around her, she said to Paul with a queenly air:

“You may sit down.” Then she added, quite seriously, “I am going away to-morrow.”

Paul’s boyish heart gave a jump. He was secretly very much afraid of Lucie, and disapproved of her—but she was so fascinating, and life at Bienville would seem so different after she went away. He stammered:

“I am sorry, Mademoiselle.”

“But I shall come back,” said Lucie in a sprightly tone. “You see, it is so very easy to frighten grandmama. All I have to do is to stop eating for two days, and it really isn’t so bad at all.”

Paul Verney, although not a greedy youngster like Toni, thought that to go without eating for two days was a very severe test of affection, but it was like everything else about Lucie, dashing and daring, and quite out of the common. He replied timidly:

“I hope, Mademoiselle, you won’t make yourself ill. It always makes me ill to go without my dinner even.”

“I suppose,” said Lucie, “that is when your mama punishes you—isn’t it?”

Paul blushed more deeply than ever. He wished to appear a man, and here was Lucie reminding him that he was, after all, only a little boy. Then Lucie asked him:

“What do you mean to be when you grow up?”

“A soldier, Mademoiselle,” said Paul, straightening himself up involuntarily. “I am going to the cavalry school at St. Cyr. I shall ride a fine horse like the officers here in Bienville. I told papa and mama my last birthday, and they are quite willing.”

“But it will be a long time yet,” said Lucie, “won’t it?”

“Not so very long,” said Paul. “In four years I shall go to the cavalry school, and then in four years more I shall be graduated, and then I shall be a lieutenant, and have a sword, and wear a helmet with a horse-hair plume in it.”

The picture which Paul unconsciously drew of himself was very attractive to the imaginative Lucie. She looked at him meditatively, and wondered how he would look when he was grown up, with his sword and horse-hair plume. Paul was not particularly handsome, but his somewhat stocky figure was well-knit, and he looked unqualifiedly clean and honest—two great recommendations in any man or boy.

“By the time you are a lieutenant with a sword,” she continued, “I shall be a young lady with a long train and I shall be very rich. Harper told me so, and then I am coming to Bienville, and I will buy the commandant’s house, and have the finest carriage in Bienville, and have a ball every night.”

Paul listened to this with a sudden sinking of the heart. The realization came to him, as much as if he had been twenty instead of twelve years old, that this splendid picture which Lucie drew of her future did not accord with his, the son of a Bienville advocate, who lived in a modest house and whose mother made most of her own gowns. And besides that, he did not like, and did not understand Lucie’s innocent bragging. He was a sweet, sensible boy, with a practical French mind, who never bragged about anything in his life, and who did heroic, boyish things in the most matter-of-fact manner in the world, and never thought they were heroic. But Lucie was so charming! Like many a grown up man his judgment and his heart went different ways. Lucie had his heart—there was no question about it.

Lucie would have liked to stay a long time with Paul, and Paul would have enjoyed staying with Lucie, but, looking up, he saw his father and mother approaching, on their way to the terrace, where, like all the other inhabitants of Bienville, they spent their summer afternoons having ices or drinking tea and listening to the music. The Verneys were a comfortable-looking couple, fond of each other and adoring Paul. They smiled when they saw Paul seated on the bench and the charming little girl talking to him. They knew it was none of Paul’s doing, for he was afraid of girls and always ran away from them.

As his father and mother drew nearer, Paul’s impulse to rush away, in order to avoid being seen with Lucie, almost overpowered him, but he was at heart a courageous boy, and a chivalrous one, and he thought it would be cowardly to run off; so he stood, or rather sat his ground with apparent boldness, but his face was reddening and his heart thumping as his father and mother approached. Lucie, however, was not at all timid, and when she saw Monsieur and Madame Verney coming so close, asked Paul who they were.

“It is my father and mother,” said Paul in a shaky voice, opening his book with much embarrassment and turning over its pages.

“I think they look very nice,” said Lucie, “and see, they are smiling at you. I think they are smiling at you because you are talking to me.”

Paul’s head went down still lower on his book, and his face burned crimson. Lucie, with great self-possession, got up from the bench, and, making a pretty little bow to Monsieur and Madame Verney, skipped off back to Harper.

Monsieur Verney, a pleasant-faced man of fifty, prodded Paul with his cane.

“What charming young lady was that, my son, with whom you were speaking?”

“Mademoiselle Lucie Bernard,” Paul managed to articulate.

“And a very pretty little thing she is!” said Madame Verney, who was, herself, pretty and pleasant-looking, sitting down on the bench, and putting Paul’s blushing face upon her shoulder. “For shame, Charles, to tease the boy so!”

Paul hid his face on his mother’s shoulder, meanwhile screwing up his courage to its ultimate point. Then, raising his head, and looking his father directly in the eye, Paul said:

“When I grow up, I mean to marry Mademoiselle Lucie.”

The boy’s clear blue eyes looked directly into his father’s, which were also clear and blue, and between the boy and the man a look of sympathy, of understanding, passed. His father might laugh at him, but Paul knew that it was only a joke, after all, and as long as he behaved himself, no unkind word would be spoken to him by that excellent father.

“Oho!” said Monsieur Verney to Madame Verney, “so we are promised a daughter-in-law already!”

“That pleases me very much,” said Madame Verney, smiling. “I hope that Mademoiselle Lucie will grow up as good as she is pretty, and then I shall be very glad to have her for a daughter-in-law.”

Then his mother kissed him, and Paul got up and walked on with his father and mother, holding a hand of each and wondering if any boy ever had such a kind father and mother. They joked him about Lucie, but Paul did not mind that. He rather liked it, now that the murder was out. Presently, when Paul had gone off to play and the Verneys were sitting at a little table by themselves on the terrace, Monsieur Verney suddenly fell into a brown study, and, after a few minutes, bringing his fist down on the table and making the glasses ring, said to Madame Verney:

“I know who that little girl is now—I could not place her at first. She is the half-sister of Madame Ravenel. The child is allowed to visit her once a year—what can the family be thinking of to permit it?”

Madame Verney knew Sophie Ravenel’s history perfectly well, as did everybody in Bienville, and she knew more than most people; for she said to Monsieur Verney:

“At the time when Madame Delorme left her husband for Ravenel, this child, whom she had brought up from her birth, was taken away from her by her grandmother, their father’s mother, who is also the grandmother of Madame Ravenel. This little girl’s mother was an American, I am told. The child, I know, has been permitted to visit Madame Ravenel before, but this will scarcely be allowed after she is two or three years older. I have also heard that she has a large fortune through her mother, in her own right.”

At this the great maternal instinct welled up in Madame Verney’s heart. Why should not her Paul, the best of boys, marry a girl with a large fortune and a position like Lucie’s, which was far above Paul’s? She began to dream about Paul’s matrimonial prospects—dreams which had begun when he was a little pink baby lying in his cradle. The Verneys were not rich, nor distinguished, nor was there anything except love which would be likely to provide Paul with a wife suitable to his merits. Madame Verney, following up this dream concerning Paul, began secretly to pity Madame Ravenel, and argued that, after all, nothing about that unfortunate lady could reflect on Lucie.

Meanwhile Lucie, kneeling down on the edge of the basin of the fountain, looked into it and saw there a church brilliantly lighted, with palms and flowers all about, and full of gaily-dressed ladies and officers in uniform. And then the organ sounded and up the aisle came marching herself, in a white satin gown and lace veil; and she leaned on the arm of a young officer with a sword and a helmet with a horse-hair plume in it, and he had the honest eyes of Paul Verney.

At the end of the week Lucie vanished from Paul’s sight, but not from his memory. According to all the laws of fitness, Paul, the most honest, straightforward, matter-of-fact, obedient little fellow in the world, should have found his counterpart in the shape of another Denise Duval of his own class; for little Denise was as honest, as correct, as matter-of-fact and as obedient as Paul Verney. But, behold how it works! Paul fell in love with the vivacious, sprightly, charming Lucie, while Toni had determined to link his fate with the irreproachable and demure Denise.

CHAPTER VI

The summer waned and the autumn began and then a great shock came to Toni—two great shocks, in fact. First Paul Verney, who, next to Jacques, was Toni’s best friend, was sent away to boarding-school. Toni felt a horrible sense of loss and emptiness. In losing Paul, he seemed to lose a protector as well as a friend. He had not been so much afraid of other people when Paul was about, but now he was more afraid of them than ever. And then, Toni, being a strong, robust fellow for his age, it was forced upon Madame Marcel that, as he would not go to school, he must learn a trade.

Madame Marcel was ambitious for Toni and shed many tears over his determination not to make a walking encyclopedia of himself if he could help it. What was the use of his learning to work, anyhow? When he married Denise, as he fully intended to do, they could live over Mademoiselle Duval’s shop and eat cakes and tarts for dinner and candies for breakfast and supper. There was the bench under the acacia tree close by Mademoiselle Duval’s shop, and Toni expected to spend his adult life sitting on that bench, in the summer time, with Denise and eating cakes, and in the winter time sitting in his mother’s warm kitchen licking candy kettles.

It was a very grave matter to select a trade for Toni. Madame Marcel had aspirations for him which were not shared, however, by anybody else; for all the persons with whom she talked concerning Toni’s future were quite brutal, so his poor mother thought, and recommended putting the boy to doing hard work for which his strong little legs and arms and back well fitted him. But Madame Marcel secretly yearned to see her Toni a gentleman, though at the same time she had not the courage to advance this proposition in any way. So she thought as a compromise between a trade and a profession she would make Toni a musician—a violinist, in short.

When this was broached to Toni, he objected to it, as he did to every suggestion that he should do anything except amuse himself, talk with Jacques and hang around the horses at the cavalry barracks. His mother, however, for once showed some determination, and Toni, finding that he absolutely had to learn to work, begged and prayed that he might be allowed to work about the one livery stable in the town of Bienville. Toni really did not think he would mind feeding and currying horses, he loved them so much—almost as much as Jacques and Paul Verney—and, like Jacques, they were interested listeners—more interested than most of the people he knew. Madame Marcel would by no means consent to this, and urged on Toni the advantage of playing first violin in the orchestra of the theater, like Hermann, the yellow-haired Swiss, who was first violinist at the Bienville theater.

“Do you call that work,” asked Toni indignantly, as if he were already a captain of industry—“sitting there and fiddling for amusement? Why, mama, that isn’t work at all—it’s just amusement.”

“Then why do you object to it?” asked Madame Marcel helplessly.

“Because it is not work,” replied Toni boldly. “When I work, I want to work—currying horses or something.”

“But have you no ambition?” cried poor Madame Marcel. “Do you want to be a mere hostler?”

Toni’s mind had not projected itself very far. He knew that he would have to serve his time in the army, and it had occurred to him that he would certainly be put in the cavalry, and he said as much to his mother. But Madame Marcel, who could not persuade herself that Toni was not an innocent and guileless creature, could not endure the thought of turning him loose in a stable, to bear the kicks and cuffs, the jokes and jeers, of a lot of rough stablemen.

She asked Toni if he would be willing to learn the trade of a tailor. Clery, the tailor, lived opposite them, and was a very respectable man, who made a good living for his family. But Toni hastily objected to this—he was afraid of the five Clery boys.

So Madame Marcel and Toni kept going around in a circle for many days and weeks. Finally Madame Marcel one morning, taking Toni by his hand, having washed him clean for once, and dressed him in his best Sunday suit, carried him off to see Monsieur Hermann, the Swiss, in regard to converting Toni into a second Sarasate or Ysaye. Hermann lived in two little rooms at the top of a rickety old tenement, and Toni’s heart sank as he climbed the stairs, holding on tightly to his mother’s hand. He did not like Hermann’s looks—a big, blue-eyed Swiss, who imagined that he resembled Lohengrin and Siegfried, and dressed the part as well as he was able by cultivating a head of long curly blond hair and a huge blond beard.

Madame Marcel explained, as mothers are apt to do under similar circumstances, that, finding Toni totally unfitted for anything else, she had determined to make a musician of him. Hermann smiled. There was nothing of the artistic temperament visible in that tousled head of black hair, those bright, dark eyes which changed their expression as quickly as the little river under the stone bridge changed its look on an April day of sun and rain. And Toni had hard, muscular little hands, which did not seem to Hermann as if they could ever wield the magic bow. Toni himself looked sulky. He had no mind to be a fiddler, and did not mean to learn. However, his mother arranged that he should go the next day to take his first lesson, and then they went down stairs, Toni clattering ahead.

He rushed off to the cavalry barracks at the other end of the town. It was the time for feeding the hundreds of horses in the long rows of stalls, and Toni had a few happy moments, crawling in and out as the troopers would let him, quite regardless of the Sunday suit. Oh, if he could only live with horses all the time instead of people! Now that Paul Verney was gone, he felt that it was useless for him to try to have a talking friend. But horses could understand perfectly well, and he could find much greater companionship in a horse than in a fiddle.

“Told him to go home to his mother and tell her that she had an ass for a son.”

He firmly resolved not to go next morning to take his music lesson if he could possibly help it; but when the time came he could not help it, and he started off, at a snail’s pace, for Hermann’s lodging. Hermann, leaning out of his window, saw Toni come slouching along, looking as if he were going to his execution. He scowled at Hermann, leaning out of the window. Few small boys love lessons on the violin, which is a difficult instrument, but well worth giving one’s days and nights to, thought Hermann. When Toni finally appeared, he was the image of stolidity and stupidity. Hermann put a violin in his hands, and tried to explain the scale to him, but Toni was hopelessly inept. He could not understand those queer-looking things called notes. His mind wandered to the riding-school, where he knew the troopers were going through their exercises. He thought of the day he took that glorious wild ride on the old cavalry charger. He began to wonder what Paul Verney was doing, and reflected that it would be well for him to frame an excuse some time that day to go into Mademoiselle Duval’s shop, so she would give him a bun.

It may be imagined to what a pass Toni’s state of mind reduced poor Hermann, who finally rapped him smartly over the head with the violin bow, and told him to go home to his mother and tell her that she had an ass for a son. Toni, at the first rap from the bow, which did not hurt him in the least, howled terrifically, and, rushing off home to his mother, told her, between his sobs, a harrowing tale of how Hermann had beaten him most cruelly with the violin bow. However, Madame Marcel could not find a scratch on him to corroborate Toni’s sensational tale, and flatly refused to believe him. In spite of Toni’s protests, he was sent back to Hermann’s lodgings for his music book and the little violin which Madame Marcel had asked Hermann to provide for the boy. He returned home, carrying both music book and violin, those instruments of torture, and seriously considered studying tailoring after all, as two of the Clery boys were doing. But Clery made his boys work, and Toni had great hopes that Hermann would never be able to get any work out of him.

Little Denise, who was soft-hearted, had seen him coming and going in his pursuit of an artistic career, and her heart was touched at the spectacle of Toni’s unhappiness. When he came home that second day, Denise was sitting on the bench under the acacia tree and was knitting industriously. Denise had all the virtues which Toni lacked. As Toni approached, his head hanging sullenly down, Denise held out her hand and in it was a little piece of stale tart. This brightened Toni up, and, sitting down by Denise, he told her a moving story of the cruelties he had suffered at Hermann’s hands, adding several atrocities to the original ones.

“Poor, poor Toni! I feel so sorry for you.”

“You ought to,” replied Toni, deeply touched by his own eloquence, and beginning to cry. “That man will beat me to death some day, I know he will, and I hope he will, too, because then even my mother will be sorry she sent me to learn the fiddle. O-o-o-o-h!”

Mademoiselle Duval interrupted this tender scene by coming out and calling to Toni:

“You good-for-nothing little boy, why don’t you go home and practise the violin and mind your mother? Oh, I warrant Madame Marcel will see trouble with you!”

Toni concluded that when he married Denise he would see as little as possible of his aunt-in-law as well as his father-in-law.

He went back the next day, and many days after. For weeks and months honest Hermann strove with the boy, but Toni simply would not learn the violin. However, a strange thing happened—he found he could talk to Hermann, and was not afraid of him, and Hermann discovered that this lazy, idle, dirty, bright-eyed, insinuating urchin, who had no ear for music, had some strangely companionable qualities. Toni even grew intimate enough with Hermann to tell him all about Jacques, and actually was courageous enough to show that redoubtable warrior to his friend. He told Hermann also of his friendships with horses and said to him:

“Do you know, I feel as if you were a horse—a great big sorrel cart-horse.”

Hermann threw back his head, and opened his great mouth and laughed at this.

“And I am not the least afraid of you,” continued Toni, “and that is very queer, because I am so afraid of people, except Paul Verney.”

“And shall I tell you,” said Hermann, laughing and twisting his hands in the boy’s shock of black hair, “what I think you are like? A monkey—except that you have not sense enough to learn to dance, as a monkey does.”

Toni was delighted at this. Then he said quite gravely:

“Do you know, Monsieur Hermann, of any business a boy can learn that will give him all he wants to eat, and plenty of time to amuse himself, and not make him work, and support him?”

“Oh, yes,” said Hermann. “Marry a young lady with a large fortune. That gives a man enough to do, but yet it is not called work.”

“I had already made up my mind to that,” said Toni seriously, “I am going—now don’t tell anybody this—I am going to marry little Denise Duval, and we are going to live part of the time with Mademoiselle Duval and eat cakes, and the rest of the time with my mother and eat candies.”

“Ho-ho!” laughed Hermann, who had a great, big, joyous laugh, “what a clever arrangement—and Mademoiselle Duval has agreed to this, and her niece, and your mother?”

“My mother will agree to anything I say, and Mademoiselle Duval will agree to anything Denise says, but I have not asked Denise yet—she is so young, you know, she doesn’t understand anything about these things, but I shall marry her just the same. If I ever have a wife, I mean that she shall be nice, and clean, and good, and stay at home and work hard. Women ought to work hard, you know, Monsieur Hermann.”