equestrian feats to blank verse, and he apologised for having been the means of inflicting a dull evening upon his friends.

"Only you asked me to what theatre a girl of Monica's age could be taken, you know, and there really isn't a single one just now, except the Français and the Odéon."

Perhaps it was in order to make atonement that he took some pains to amuse the girl, at whose elbow he seated himself, while Lord Lannowe dozed in the background. Or it may have been because something about her personality-the poise of her head, little tricks of voice and gesture, a way that she had of shutting up her eyes when she laughed-revived half-forgotten memories for him. Certainly she was very far from being as beautiful as Frances Ferrand had once been; but, on the other hand, she was a good deal more attractive than the Duchess of Leith now was. It is permissible for a man who is as near forty as no matter to be attracted by a child of seventeen, and he may even endeavour to attract her without much danger either to her peace of mind or to his own.

Monica, would, in any case, have found Colonel Gervase interesting, for she had romantic ideas respecting his lifelong disappointment and constancy which a suggestion of weariness and melancholy in the set of his features helped to confirm. Also she thought him remarkably handsome, with his aquiline nose and his clear grey eyes, although he was becoming bald and although his hair had begun to turn grey at the temples. Strange indeed did it seem to her that he should have been rejected for the Duke of Leith, that grubby little old man whose peevish temper made him a daily trial to all about him. She could only assume that pressure had been brought to bear upon her sister Frances

pressure of a kind which did not strike a girl nurtured in French traditions as extraordinary or unreasonable.

Colonel Gervase both asked and answered a considerable number of questions, for the dialogue in the box was not much interrupted by that upon the stage. She heard from him the names of various distinguished spectators; she learned that he was not greatly enamoured of his present post, which he expected to relinquish ere long; she was also informed that he thought of resigning his commission in the army, now that he had come into possession of a small landed estate in the Eastern counties, where he hoped to end his days; he added that he was fonder of sport than of society, and that he detested London. Monica, on her side, was equally communicative, if she had less to communicate. She could not tell him what her personal tastes were, for the excellent reason that she had as yet had no opportunity for forming any; but she spoke of her prospects, alluded to her affection for Ethel Dallison (at the sound of whose name he made a slight grimace) and owned that she was looking forward to her first season in London. She was to be taken under the Duchess's wing, it appeared, and she did not see why an arrangement which sounded so promising should draw a compassionate sigh from him.

"Only because you are so young," he replied, on being requested point-blank to explain. "One knows. what a London season means, and one wishes that that sort of thing could be put off a little longer."

"My marriage, do you mean?" asked Monica, placidly (and he could not help thinking how like a Ferrand it was to accept woman's destiny in this matterof-course way.) "Yes, I am not in a hurry; I should like to wait a year or two, if I might choose. But I

think most likely my sisters will say that I must not be too difficult."

"No doubt they will; but it doesn't follow that you are bound to obey your sisters," Colonel Gervase returned almost angrily. "Your life belongs to you, not to them, I take it."

"Our lives never belong to ourselves alone," Monica announced, in her prim little convent-bred style.

"Well," observed Gervase, smiling, "if yours belongs to anybody else, it must surely be to your father, in the first instance. Is he so eager to get rid of you ?”

Monica glanced over her shoulder at Lord Lannowe, who was now peacefully slumbering.

"He is so good and kind!" she whispered. "We were talking this afternoon about my marrying, and he declared that he would like to keep me with him always. But I don't think he can have quite meant that. It would not be reasonable, would it?"

Gervase's brow clouded over. Were they all the same? he was wondering; did they all, from the moment that they left the nursery, begin to regard man as their legitimate quarry and themselves as defrauded if they failed to run him down?

"I suppose it wouldn't," he agreed curtly, and changed the subject.

At the close of the evening, however, he reverted to it for a moment.

"Look here, Monica," said he; "although I am not a great frequenter of smart society, circumstances have compelled me to know a good deal about most of the people whom you are likely to meet in London. Don't let your sisters make up a match for you without consulting me. That is a pretty cool request, you will say ; but really, if you will think of it, it is a perfectly harmless one, You will not need to act upon my advice or

to believe in my information; but it can't hurt you to hear me."

"Thank you," answered the girl, wonderingly; "you are very kind. Yes, I will consult you when the time comes, if it ever does come, and if I have the chance."

"Oh, I will take care that you shall have the chance. And now, as the curtain will fall presently, perhaps I had better wake up your father."

MR.

CHAPTER III

MISS DALLISON'S VICTIMS

R. SOL WHARTON came tearing down the Champs Élysées in his motor-car at a rate of speed which would assuredly have brought him into collision with the police, if Paris possessed any police worthy of the good old Imperial traditions in these democratic days. As it was, on turning into the Place de la Concorde he narrowly escaped coming into collision with a sauntering Englishman, who skipped nimbly aside and objurgated him in terms more forcible than polite. Mr. Wharton at once stopped his machine, got out and advancing, with his straw hat in his hand, said, in slow, drawling accents

"Sorry to have alarmed you, sir. nevertheless, that I object to being clumsy tinker."

Let me tell you, called a damned

"Then you shouldn't behave like one," curtly returned the young man whom he addressed, and with whom, by reason of his stature and breadth of chest, it might have seemed imprudent to quarrel. But Sol Wharton, though educated in England, was now domiciled in Paris, and as he had assimilated the costume, together with many of the customs, of France, he probably did not contemplate anything so low as a resort to fisticuffs. He was feeling in his pocket for his card-case when the Englishman suddenly clapped him on the shoulder and burst out into a laugh, saying