I marvelled to discover how little the Vicomte interested himself in politics. One other discovery only did I make respecting my patron; I found that he loved money. My conscience, as I have said, was busy at this time, and the burden of my deception began to weigh upon my mind as if I had been a mere schoolboy, and no man of the world. I might, however, have borne the burden easily enough if chance had not favoured the right. I was one morning writing in Monsieur de Clericy's study, when the door was impetuously thrown open and Lucille came running in. "Ah!" she said, stopping, "only you." "That is all, Mademoiselle." She was turning to go when on an impulse of the moment I called to her. "Mademoiselle!" She turned and slowly came back. With a little laugh she stood in front of me seated at the great table. She took up a quill pen, which I had laid aside a moment earlier, and played with it. "What are you writing?" she asked, looking down at the papers before me--"your own history?" As she spoke the pen escaped from her fingers and fell upon my papers, leaving ink stains there. "There," she cried, with a laugh of mock despair, "I have spoilt your life." "No; but you have altered its appearance," I answered. "Mademoiselle, I have something to say to you. When I came here I deceived your father. I told him that I was ruined--that my father had disowned me--that I was forced to earn my own livelihood. It was untrue--I shall one day be as rich as your father." "Then why did you come here?" asked the girl, for a moment grave. "To be near you." And she broke into a laugh, shaking her head. "I saw you in the crowd at the Fete Napoleon--I heard your voice. There is no one in the world like you. I fell in love, Mademoiselle." Still she laughed, as if I were telling her an amusing story. "And it is useless," I pursued, somewhat bitterly, perhaps. "I am too old?" There was a little mirror on the mantelpiece. She ran and fetched it and held it in front of my face. "Look," she cried merrily. "Yes, hundreds of years!" With a laugh and flying skirts she ran from the room. Chapter V C'est la Vie "Les querelles ne dureraient pas longtemps si le tort n'etait d'un cote." Monsieur Alphonse Giraud, unlike many men, had an aim in life--a daily purpose with which he rose in the morning at, it must be admitted, a shockingly late hour--without which he rarely sought his couch even when it was not reached until the foolish birds were astir. The son of the celebrated Baron Giraud sought, in a word, to be mistaken for an Englishman--and what higher ambition could we, who modestly set such store upon our nationality, desire him to cherish?