She paused, and her eyes sought mine with a keen interrogation. I stood erect; something in her tone stung me. “I am not your uncle’s friend, Mademoiselle Ramodanofsky,” I said a little defiantly; “I am a stranger to him, a French gentleman, Philippe de Brousson.” There was a startled cry from the farther side of the room, where the other woman had remained; she came across now, staring at me strangely. “Philippe de Brousson!” she cried in a high French voice. “It is Philippe, little Philippe!” It was my turn to stare in blank astonishment. She was a tall angular woman, with near-sighted eyes, and gray curls dancing on her temples. I did not know her, but it was evident that she recognized me with ecstasy. Zénaïde was looking at her with a reflection of my amazement. “Mademoiselle Eudoxie,” she said warningly, “you are very short-sighted; you may have made another mistake.” The name struck me at once as familiar, and I looked at the woman with a sudden vague recollection. “You know me, Monsieur Philippe?” she said, regarding me with a smile on her quaint thin face; “you remember old Eudoxie Varien, who taught you and little Marie, the saints rest her soul!” It was the governess who had watched over my little sister and me in the old château, the Tour de Brousson. I remembered her very well now, and grasped her hand warmly, a thousand memories of childhood and my dead sister thronging into my mind. “If we had met at any other moment, Mademoiselle Eudoxie,” I said, “I should have known you at once.” The tears were shining in the good woman’s eyes, and with a sudden impulse, she stood on tip-toe and kissed my cheek. “Oh, little Philippe!” she exclaimed tremulously. “Forgive an old woman, M. de Brousson; you bring back the happiest hours of my life. Do you remember the rose-garden behind the château, and the day the hawk was killed?” I remembered it well, and in that far country, in the upper room of a Russian boyar’s house, the perfume of the roses of Provence seemed to float upon my senses; and I saw again the gray château with its graceful turrets and neat, beautiful garden, with its hedges and its terraces. Childhood passes so swiftly, and never again returns the light heart, the innocent mind! Mademoiselle Eudoxie and I looked long at each other, and my childish affection for the kindly governess awoke in a genuine regard for this faded woman. Recollecting myself, I turned to apologize to Mademoiselle Ramodanofsky, but she was regarding me with quite a different expression; my strange entrance was evidently forgotten, and she was smiling as she looked at Mademoiselle Eudoxie’s flushed and tearful face. “Pardon me, mademoiselle,” I said; “I trespass upon your courtesy, but this meeting was as unexpected as my entrance here.” “I rejoice to see Mademoiselle Eudoxie so happy,” Zénaïde replied graciously; and then, after a moment’s hesitation, “Will M. de Brousson be seated?” Mademoiselle Eudoxie looked at her in a kind of panic.