current with all that faculty of prompt organisation so peculiar to the race of France; for the _rendezvous_ was made in the neighbouring archway of some porte-cochère, apart from the bustle of the crowd, to hold the table with its white fringed cloth, and the silver salver, where the savings of their own pocket-money had been first put for a handsel, as they gathered from the various houses near. The old gentleman, as he approached, had his skirts pulled by some lisping little one, with chubby cheeks, and curls that had vainly been flattened, while her face peered from under the grey stuff of the mimic beggar’s cloak: the most simply dressed would hold the salver to the lady of quality; the most polite to the bourgeois; the plainest-featured to the widow, the spinster, or faded beauty; the tallest to the middle-aged gentleman, the prettiest to the gallant: and no rivalry, but how to get most, disturbed the co-operation of those young quêteuses. The English baronet, indeed, knew nothing of it as he trotted forward, before the archway could be seen, with its lurking, listening, peeping group, holding their breath in expectation: he only saw a slender young form, too tall for the grey cloak to smother the whole of her white summer dress, trip from beside the wall, and hold up her rosy palm before him, like a beggar; they had chosen the eldest, for her eyes and complexion, to try the rich Englishman. “Pour nos pauvres, s’il vous plait, Monsieur,” said a clear sweet voice, plaintively. Sir Godfrey had checked his horse with a start; she was a girl little younger than his own Rose, with the very blue eyes and that palest yellow hair, which are so rare in France, though with that warmly-bright complexion which is never seen out of it, suffused as it seems through a strange shadow of brown. The folds and hood of the cloak could not disguise the girlish grace of her figure, just shooting towards womanhood; the studiously plain arrangement of the hair _à la quête_, virgin-like, added to her pure beauty, and did not take away from the slightly coquettish glance from her drooped head as she thus made her appeal. “My dear little one!” ejaculated Sir Godfrey hastily—“how—what—_you_ are not a—in poverty?” Her cheek reddened as she drew up her head proudly. “Me? Yes, we are poor, but noble—Armand and I. It is for the poor of the city, Monsieur—of Paris.” Sir Godfrey reddened too, and listened calmly to her eager explanation. “Ah, _you_ are rich—you are English!” she added anxiously, as if afraid he hesitated. His glance of surprised inquiry did not escape her. “I know you, Monsieur,” she said, “for you live close to our convent in the Rue Debilly, near the Quai de Change, where I am a pensionnaire, and where my aunt is the superior. I come often with one of the sisters to arrange the quête here. There are so many poor!”