She did not, however, appear to notice my confusion, or else my eyes played false. Her voice was just as even as it wandered on at the impulse of her rambling fancy, as I thought. "I have been thinking, Brown, that you were not born a servant," she said quietly. "Will you tell me if I guessed aright?" No prescience warned me of a snare. Had any other woman asked me such a question I should have smiled and lied, knowing well that woman's deepest policy is to persuade with flatteries. But Marion questioned, and I answered from my heart. "My father was a gentleman by birth, madam." "Ah!" she sighed. "He met with some unhappiness, no doubt?" "He lies in a pauper's grave. He was a great musician." "And have you inherited his talent?" "I play the flute and violin indifferently well, madam." "And you are educated too, for I have marked your speech?" "My father did his best for me, madam, though I was slow, I fear, to learn. He was the wisest man, and yet the most unfortunate, whom I have ever known." "Some day I may ask you to give me his history." She sighed again, and for a time was silent, but at length she fixed her eyes upon my face and said: "You have a foreign 'air,' monsieur; I, who am French, as you certainly must have guessed, have marked it. Is it possible that your father was my countryman?" "He had not that honour, mademoiselle." She gave a little frown. "And yet your name, Hume--I think you said it might be French?" "No, mademoiselle; but my mother was a Parisienne. That will account to you perhaps for the foreign 'air' you have marked in me." She nodded her head, and half closing her eyes she began in a low voice of melting sweetness to hum to the tune of a famous little chansonette, whose refrain is inexpressibly mournful and pathetic, Maeterlinck's exquisite little poem, "Et s'il revenait un jour!" Knowing well the sadness in her which the sadness of her song expressed, I felt my heart ache and my eyes grew strangely blurred. Of a sudden she stopped and, leaning forward, gave me a look which seemed to reveal a longing to be comforted. "Ah, sir!" she said in French. "I see you have a heart that might vibrate to woman's tears. And yet you cannot know how sad I am, how very, very miserable!" And as she gazed at me her eyes overflowed with two such tears as she had spoken of. There are times when a passion of insensate anger seizes me to look back upon my folly. Ah! woman's wiles, woman's wiles! The greatest and the least of us have been their victims. And who am I to rave of my undoing, when a Sampson, a Nelson, and even a Napoleon, that man of iron, shared my fate. But I was blind, blind! Pierced by the sight of those tears to the very fibres of my being, I sprang up, then falling on my knee before her, I seized and passionately kissed her hand.