Ned had, of course, heard of the not altogether peaceful invasion of the drowsy little town by one particularly hybrid company of emigrants that was, in fact, the travelling suite of Mademoiselle d’Orléans, whom the Duke her father had, for safety, shipped to England towards the latter end of the previous year. The importance of mademoiselle’s advent was signified rather in her rank than her maturity, which presented her as a lymphatic little body, some fifteen years of age, with pink eye-places and a somewhat pathetic trick of expression. But, if her title proclaimed her nominal suzerainty over the _valetaille_ that, in its habits of volubility and swagger, was to inflame the popular sense of decorum by-and-by to a rather feverish pitch of resentment, the very practical conduct of the expedition was in the hands of that wonderful woman whom an irreverent virtuosity had entitled “Rousseau’s hen.” Ned had not in the least desired to make the acquaintance of this Madame de Genlis. His position in the neighbourhood rather entailed upon him the courtesy of a welcome to the royal little red-eyed stranger at his gates; yet, adapting his unsociability to popular rumour of the formidable _bas-bleu_ that dragoned her, he delayed a duty until its fulfilment became an impossibility. And even a chance report or so that had reached him of the beauty of madame’s adopted child--the flower-faced Pamela (“_notre petit bijou_”), in praise of whose name, abbreviated, a dozen local squireens were flogging their tuneless brains for any rhyme less natural to the effort than “damn!”--moved him only to some sardonic reflections on the uncomplimentary significance of a gift that seemed designed in principle for a stimulant to fools. To fools had been his thought; and now here he was, having for the first time happened upon this actual Pamela, not only awake of a sudden to a glaring sense of the social solecism he had committed, but awake, also, to a sentiment much less intimate (as he thought) to the world of ordinary emotions. It was astounding, it was humiliating so to truckle to the thrall of a couple of blue eyes that, for all purposes of vision, were no better than his own. He stood astonished; he rebelled--but he pursued. He felt his very _amour-propre_ giving before the incursion of a force, stranger yet akin to it. So the big brown rat (oh, vile analogy!) usurped the kingdom of his little black cousin. Why, then, did the unfortunate young man not reject and cast forth the spell that seemed to drain him of all the ichor of independence? Why did he wantonly stimulate in himself a fancy that his calm judgment pronounced hysterical? How can these things be answered? How could any sober reason analyse the motives of a person who kept in his tail-pocket, and frequently sat upon, a charm that absolutely bristled with spikes? It is the way of love. When the mystic bolt flies, the philosopher apart must take his chance of a wound with the man who lives in a street.