"Well, and what do you say?" asked Mme. Plaquet, as, with arms folded and a general air of mistress of the situation, she surveyed her mysterious young friend, whilst, with a half-amused countenance, he read M. de Lorme's missive. "Oh!" said George, "I don't know. What a fuss you French people make about stopping a horse! There--don't say any more about it. I have a friend staying with me who knows how to arrange all these matters, and I will consult him. To-morrow or the day after he shall come to see you. You will like him. Is the lady quite recovered?" "Entirely. But she looked so sad when she came, and came, and never found you. Ah! if I were a handsome young man, how many horses would I not stop, only to get one such glance from such lovely eyes!" The next morning, Ned was to return with his sister, and George went down to the railway station to meet them. If he showed himself a trifle more careful than he had been lately in his selection of a tie and in his dress generally, and if anybody had entered at the time and told him so, George would probably have been angry at the idea of his returning to such weaknesses. There was Ned's pleasant face at the window; there he is waving his hat; and here he is now introducing Miss Mary Fitzgerald to his old friend, Mr. George Howard, to the mutual astonishment and evident confusion of that lady and gentleman, who blushed and turned pale by turns like guilty things. Even Ned was dumfoundered a moment, and argued to himself, from these silent but unmistakable signs of recognition between the parties, that his ceremony of introduction was quite a superfluous piece of etiquette. He broke the awkward silence in his characteristic fashion: "Well, if you people know each other already, you had better say so at once, and not let me make an ass of myself by going through a formal introduction--a thing I always hate. Mary, do you know George, or don't you?" There were tears in Mary's large eyes, as, clinging a moment to her brother, she sobbed rather than said: "O Ned! this is the gentleman I told you of, ... to whom I owe my life, ... of whom we were all speaking...." And then, turning the luminous and still tearful eyes full on George, who could scarcely stand up against the rush of mingled feelings that oppressed him, said, with a genuine simplicity and native grace which were most moving, as she took his hand in her own with an action at once gentle and natural: "Sir, it was a bitter thought to me that I should be compelled to leave France without knowing and thanking the brave gentleman who risked his life to save mine. I had hoped to see you at M. de Lorme's, and had so much to say to you. But now that I meet you," glancing at Ned, "in this ... in this way, my heart is so full I can say nothing...." And the gathering tears began to fall. It was time for Ned to intervene: