"What a long six weeks it was! And, after all, I came back before the close of my engagement, and forfeited half my salary. There had been floods as usual in Lyons, the poor woman I had left him with couldn't write, and I was getting uneasy about my boy. "Oh! Mrs. Lascelles, when I returned there I couldn't find him. The cottage I left him in had been swept away when the river rose. No trace even remained of the quiet little street. The authorities had done all in their power for hundreds of ruined families; what was one poor woman and a two-years old child amongst all those sufferers! I searched the markets, the streets, the hospitals. I haunted the police-office; I offered everything I possessed, freely, everything! for tidings of my boy. One Commissary of Police was especially kind and considerate, but even he let out at last that I was well rid of my child! Madame, as he expressed it, so young, so handsome, with such talents, so _sympathique_ with himself! And this was a _man_, my dear, not a brute--at least, not more a brute than the rest! "He it was who found out for me that the poor woman was drowned with whom I had left my boy; there was no clue to the fate of her child nor of mine. _Monsieur le Commissaire_, with supreme good taste, chose the hour in which he made me this communication, to couple with it a proposal that did not increase my respect for himself or his sex. You may imagine I did not even yet relax my endeavours to find out something certain about my boy. I went to the Mayor, the Préfet; in my desolation, I even wrote to my old admirer, the Manager, in Paris. On all sides I met with the same treatment; civility, compliment, egoism, and utter heartlessness. In time I came to think that there was not only nothing _new_, but nothing _good_, under the sun. If I were romantic I should say I was a tigress robbed of her cub; as I am only practical, I call myself simply a woman of the world, whom the world has hardened; cunning, because deceived; pitiless, because ill-treated; heartless, because _désillusionée_. You have taken me in, and tamed me for a time, but nothing will change my nature now. "The rest of my history you know; the depths to which I sank, the meannesses of which I was capable, the hypocrisy that re-established me in a station of respectability, and swindled people out of such recommendations as the one that enabled me to make a fool of Sir Henry Hallaton. As I told you before, my motto now is, 'War to the knife!' I might add, 'Woe to the vanquished!'" The tears stood in her listener's blue eyes more than once during this strange recital; but Mrs. Lascelles brightened up when it was over, and pointed to the clock, with a light laugh-- "Go and put your armour on, my dear," said she, "and bid your maid look to the joints of your harness. We fight to-night in _champ clos_, and you have two champions to encounter, both eager for the fray!" Miss Ross smiled--