"Silent? Ma foi, oui, Madame Bloont. I will be close as box," and he gave his shoulders a shrug, put his fingers to his lips, half-shut his eyes, and nodded his head a great many times over. "I knew you would," murmured Mrs Blunt; "and as to my lady assistants, I feel assured that I can depend upon them." "Oh, yes," cried all these, in chorus. "And you had better now return to the classroom, Miss Bozerne," said Miss Furness, who had seemed in a fidget ever since I had followed them into the place. "Ah, yes--please leave us now, Miss Bozerne," said Mrs Blunt. "Of course we can depend upon you, my child?" I promised all they wished, and was going across the hall, when I met James, with a piece of paper in his hand. "Please, miss, where's Monser Tirrel?--a boy just brought this for him." "I'll take it in to him," I said, with the blood seeming to run in a torrent to my heart; and there I stood, with the piece of a leaf of a pocket-book in my hand. It was not doubled up, and as I glanced down upon it I could see that it was scribbled over, evidently hastily, in pencil. I was about to carry it into the breakfast-room, when a word caught my eye; and telling myself it was not dishonourable, and that I had some right to know the secrets of Achille, I felt that I must read it through. "He says that I am his own, so that I have a right to see his correspondence," I said to myself, trying to find an excuse for the deceitful act; and then trembling all over, I read, hastily scrawled-- "Monsieur,--Vous m'avez insulte affreusement. Si vous n'etes pas poltrone, vous serez, sans ami, dans les prairies au moulin a une heure. "Giulio Pazzoletto." "Oh, horror!" I ejaculated, "it is a challenge; and if I give it to him, that horrid Italian will shoot or stab to death my poor Achille! What shall I do--what shall I do?" There I stood, racked with anguish, till I heard footsteps approaching, when I fled into the schoolroom, where there was such a noise, and all the pupils flocked round me directly, to ask no end of questions; but I was so agitated that I could not speak. However, the first thing I did was to spitefully bite the wicked, murderous note into fragments, and scatter them about the place; and then, recalling Mrs Blunt's last words, I was so retentive of the information the girls were all eager to acquire, that they one and all sided against me, and said I was "a proud, stuck-up, deceitful crocodile." "I don't care, children," I said, haughtily--for I was more at ease now that I knew he would not get the note--"I don't care, children, Mrs Blunt said that I was not to talk about it." "Children, indeed!" exclaimed little pert Celia Blang--"why, that's the very thing that would make you tell us all! 'Tisn't that: it's because you are so stuck-up, you and Clara Fitzy; but she's shut up now, and is going to be sent away, and a good thing too; and now you'll only have Patty Fatty to talk to, and I hope you'll like it."