"In return I send you a very direct answer, as you have a right. There can be no question, sir, of my accepting a gift far too great, which I had never anticipated, to which my thoughts were never directed at all. It would be a poor compliment in return for your goodness if I should take what you offer as carelessly as if it were a cup of tea you were offering me. Oh, no! no! I respect you too much to do so. A moment's thought will also show you how very unsuitable in every way it would be. You are young, you are rich, you have all the world can give. I am old--a middle-aged woman. I have nothing at all but the _beau nom_ you were so good as to recognise. It does not mean even what it would mean in England--it means nothing; in my own country, being poor, I would not even carry it. My mother calls herself in Paris only Madame Castel. And, chief of all, I am more old than you, middle-aged; it is therefore a thing beyond the possibility of even taking into consideration at all. "Adieu, monsieur, je vous remercie de tout mon coeur; vous ne m'avez pas insultée, vous m'avez flattée; je réponds avec une vive reconnaissance. Que le bon Dieu vous donne tous ce que vous pouvez désirer hors la pauvre et obscure créature qui s'appellera toujours,--Votre obligée, "CLAIRE DE CASTEL-SOMBRE." She wrote this in great haste at last, and, without even trusting herself to read it over, fastened it hastily into its envelope. She was so frightened lest anybody should see it--lest it should fall under the eyes of any youthful observer, whether pupil or attendant--that she put it by her bedside unaddressed until the morning, when she concealed it in her pocket until, in the course of the morning's walk, she could put it into the nearest post-office. Perhaps it was her sense of wishing to conceal which made the children's chatter so significant to her. "Oh, Mademoiselle," said Edith, "why didn't you send your letters out for the early post with mother's?" "And why didn't you give it me to carry?" cried Dorothy; "you know I'm always the postman." "Mother would say it was to somebody, and you didn't want us to see the address," said the one little importunate. "And you needn't have been so careful, Mademoiselle," said the other, "for I would never have told who it was." "There is no question of telling," said Mademoiselle, very gravely, to stop further discussion; but as she turned away from the post-office another dreadful and unforeseen accident happened. Charles Wargrave came up to the group. She felt her heart leap from where it was, very low down in her being, up, up to her throat. The children seized upon their cousin as usual, while she walked along by their side with downcast head. They told him all the story, how Mademoiselle had been posting a letter and would not let any one see the address. "And I always put the